A Song of Ice & Fire on HBO

[Diable Rouge]

I liked it. There was a nice reunion, which was nice. But I thought the wall was destroyed.

And what reason was there to bring back the Night's Watch, given the undead have been destroyed, and Jon secured peace with the Wildlings?

[Diable Rouge]

They did rush it and it felt like a lot of scenes and entire episodes are missing, but the end result makes sense, more or less. And it was beautifully made.

The biggest weakness is that they never really explained who Bran really is, exactly. He’s going to drift off to find the dragon. What was that supposed to mean?

Doing his whole warg trance bilocation thing.

[Incandenza]

Thread:

[URL]https://twitter.com/BrentSirota/status/1130422050529644544[/URL]

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Obviously my use of the word “deported” was meant as a bit of a joke but I thought it noticeable that Westeros ended up being ruled by a white and nearly all male elite, plus ca change?

well apart from the half of the country that is ruled by women and brown people.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Thread:

[URL]https://twitter.com/BrentSirota/status/1130422050529644544[/URL]

All of the leading nobles are happy out with the current dispensation, at the start, with the exception of your man over in the iron islands, who has recently had his head kicked in by everyone.The thing that is politically defective about Westeros is that the queen keeps having kids with her brother, and kills the king so her children can rule. then her inbred emotionally disturbed son publicly executes his most important well connected hostage, inciting the sleepy half of the country into revolt, while the king's brothers both kick off when they hear that the new king isn't their nephew at all. The thing that is the problem with westeros is that absolute monarchs are a bit shit. The Mad king is mad, robert is a useless drunk, joffrey is a psychopath, cersei is spoiled to the point of being genocidal, stannis is basically robespierre, Jon snow is a simpleton, and daeneyris reaches the point where she decides to use her dragon as first resort rather than last resort. The only one of them who isn't a complete cunt is mance rayder, and he's king by persuasion rather than by self proclaimed divine right.

[tracteurgarcon]

well apart from the half of the country that is ruled by women and brown people.

Sansa rules the North but which bits of Westeros are ruled by brown people at the end?

[ooh aah]

Dorne

[ooh aah]

The final episode resolved things as best as was probably possible given some of the decisions that went beforehand. Ultimately I think almost all the problems could have been resolved if series 7 and 8 had just had 10 episodes like the rest. The battle for winterfell could have been the series 7 finale, and then more time could have been given to develop the final twist in Daeneys' storyline which would have at least made what then happened in King's Landing a bit more in keeping with her character.

[HeavyDracula]

The ending was good, after some wonky rushing to get there. All the good people got what they wanted, even Varys in death. And I particularly liked the look on Grey Worm's face as they argued about who was going to be king - like, FUCK ALL THIS SHIT.

[ad hoc]

This may have already been posted, but i haven't read back on the thread. Even though I was not a GoT watcher, this article makes a lot of sense and delves a bit deeper into the issues with the writing in later series https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...es/?redirect=1

[tracteurgarcon]

Dorne

Which was previously ruled by brown people, so what actually changed?

There’s no longer an existential threat to unite the people and that’s about it.

I thought at one point that maybe Jon or Bran was going to become the Night King in order to give the squabbling Westerosi a new threat to unite against.

[Ginger Yellow]

Disappointing finale to a disappointing end to what had been a great show/book series. At times it was practically self-parody, and I hated how safe and fanservicey it was, Bran aside, which was like a giant fuck you to the audience after how much of a non-entity he's been in the show, not to mention the total lack of plausibility. I certainly have zero desire to watch any of the spin-offs.

[ursus arctos]

Tufekci is consistently worth reading

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Which was previously ruled by brown people, so what actually changed?

There’s no longer an existential threat to unite the people and that’s about it.

I thought at one point that maybe Jon or Bran was going to become the Night King in order to give the squabbling Westerosi a new threat to unite against.

what do you want them to unite against? The biggest threat to them is loneliness. There's no more than 20 million people living in a place supposedly the size of South America. all of the fighty people are dead. A third of the continent is north of the wall, and has literally 200 inhabitants. The reason that no-one is particularly upset when Sansa fucks off with about half the kingdom is that the north is a largely uninhabited wasteland. There's considerably less than a 1 million people dotted around an enormous area of bogland, forest and mountain, and the upper level of the population is bounded by the need to be able to store enough food to see them through long winters.

[Wouter D]

Wouter will be glad at the return of ser sheepy.

I was delighted. Just imagine how Kit Harington had to act this level of affection towards an actual sheep, who was replaced by a direwolf in post.

MVP of the series, Ser Sheepy.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Best name by miles.

[VTTBoscombe]

In a broad brush strokes kind of way, it worked for me. The pillars of what I am guessing Martin told the DD's was the ending was probably intact, it was the bits in between that Martin would have fleshed out a lot, lot more.
And for that I will wait , and wait and wait for him to get some books published.

However, overall, although I look back with a lot of favouritism on those glacial , character building paces of the earlier seasons, (Rob plodding around the Riverlands anyone?) it was pretty bloody great run of seasons, and I will miss it , 'tho not overly thrilled to these rumoured spin offs.
If there is one, I would be more interested in the build up and run through of Robert's rebellion, Arthur Dayne, Selmy , Rhaegar etc - sounds more interesting than Arya being a Kung Foo traveller or Children of the blooming forest stuff.

Yes the Starks came out on top, and that seems a bit too nice for GOT; but that's what I, and many wanted to happen, especially since Ned's head loss/The Red Wedding etc, so why not?
Gotta Warg.....

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

That article puts its finger on the nub of Martin's problem, and it's why he can't really move the story on and finish those books. The writers are getting the blame for problems of Martin's making. The Sociological story telling aspect of it is interesting, but there's a huge slap of the personal story in it right from the beginning, and you are still going to run smack bang into the problems of the fantasy genre. What is the sociological way to tell the story of the defeat the night king? What is the sociological way to deal with an absolute ruler who has a dragon? how are we going to get to the point where magic is essentially driven from the kingdom?

A lot of people seem to have been upset at Daenerys torching the city, but I found myself thinking "Fair enough" She's been here before, and taken the surrender of cities as the great liberator before, but all that happens is that the people in that city take you in, and start killing you and your trusted advisers until you move on, leaving behind an anarchy that made Iraq in 2004 look like utopia. She's lost all her advisers, and anyone she can trust, along with two of her dragons. She has a Dragon, and the temporary allegiance of a private army who are going to fuck off home shortly. her only leverage over kings landing is the dragon, and all the dragon is good for is burning the place to the ground. All she's ever done is march from place to place killing people and taking over for a bit, and then moving on. She knows very little about anything else. She may as well get it over with, so everyone knows exactly where they stand. Think of her as John Bolton with Boobs.

Also it has to be noted that Jon Snow spends the entire series getting himself into a lot of unpleasant situations entirely because his major character flaw is the compulsive need to do the right thing, in whatever situation he is in, whatever the cost. He's very slow on the uptake,indeed Arya, tyrion and Daenerys have to make it explicit that she is going to kill sansa and burn winterfell, but eventually he gets the message and does the right thing regardless of the personal cost. Also you don't go to the trouble of turning someone into a terrifying magical assassin, and then have them do nothing. How did people think the battle with the night king was going to pan out? The goodies hold off the baddies for just about long enough, and at the key point in the battle the chief baddy is going to get over confident, make a mistake, and Arya is going to jump out of a shadow and do him.

[Hot Pepsi]

The final episode resolved things as best as was probably possible given some of the decisions that went beforehand. Ultimately I think almost all the problems could have been resolved if series 7 and 8 had just had 10 episodes like the rest. The battle for winterfell could have been the series 7 finale, and then more time could have been given to develop the final twist in Daeneys' storyline which would have at least made what then happened in King's Landing a bit more in keeping with her character.

This is correct and seems to be the general consensus of the people who really follow it closely without being too precious about it.

[WOM]

That's generous. Some of the creative and writing decisions were comically bad. Re: the final episode, the 'circle of elders' scene was so poorly written that it's rightfully drawn the Monty Python comment. GoT was, like the Sopranos, often written in marvelously short sentences. Three words here and there between two people carried an entire scene beautifully. But the 'choose the king/queen' scene was written by...I dunno...Gilmore Girls writers. Gabby and emotive as fuck, for no real reason.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

But what would you put in the final 10 episodes? There's nothing really between winterfell and kings landing, and even if you killed off nearly all of the humans fighting the white walkers, there's still a massive imbalance between the two armies. with even one dragon. Maybe they could have laid it on thicker about how upset she was at the killing of Missandei or something, or inserted a brief flashback to a mask of the sons of the harpy, but tyrion makes it so clear that this strategy of eternal war against her enemies is kind of completely consistent with everything that came before, that even jon snow gets it eventually.

[ooh aah]

Tyrion hadn't figured that out until she burned down King's Landing though.

I'd probably use the extra 3 episodes for some character development. Like what used to happen back in series 1-5.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Tyrion hadn't figured that out until she burned down King's Landing though.

And neither did we. but in hindsight it does seem kind of obvious. I find myself wondering How much of it is people being unhappy with the writing of the story, or how much of it is people being pissed off to realise that they've been rooting for a genocidal self-righteous mass murderer all along? I mean it's a bit of a land. But then again you'd probably get a similar response from a lot of people if you were to tell them about the Bengal famine, and point out that Winston Churchill was a genocidal racist mass killer of civilians.

I'd probably use the extra 3 episodes for some character development. Like what used to happen back in series 1-5.

If you move the battle with the night king to the end of season 7. You're not talking about an extra three episodes though, you're talking about an extra 7 episodes. That's a lot of time for character development.

[Hot Pepsi]

This may have already been posted, but i haven't read back on the thread. Even though I was not a GoT watcher, this article makes a lot of sense and delves a bit deeper into the issues with the writing in later series https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...es/?redirect=1

I think she's overthinking it a bit. They could have done all the things she wanted if they'd just given themselves more time.

And I don't think "sociological" story-telling is really what anyone wants from a narrative TV show. They want characters they can care about. We want those characters to be believable and, perhaps, relatable, so that requires some sociological scope, but in the end we want to know the characters. So it made sense that the final board meeting to pick the next kind just happened to have the remaining main characters and a few second or third tier characters. In "real life," there would have been a lot of randos from territories the story never got around to exploring much.

The books can do that because they're immense and the pressure to keep things moving along isn't as great as it is in film/TV. The same can be seen in how Peter Jackson adapted the Tolkien stories. He gave several characters, especially female ones, more of a role, but he also combined and/or dropped certain characters.





I suspect the TV writers just thought that a longer methodical story showing how Danyerus broke bad because of the sociological and political stressors and incentives around her would have just been boring. The audience liked surprises in the first few season - Ned Stark getting whacked, Joffrey's death, the Red Wedding, etc. So they contrived to make her final turn, if not a surprise, then at least not a forgone conclusion.* But the way to do that is to present her as somebody trying to make a difficult choice between options with clear downsides that the audience can understand.

But they really didn't do that at all with Dany in the last season. Instead they made her outcome appear uncertain, not because it was a tough choice, but because the audience had no idea what was going on in her head at all for the last few episodes. She stopped being a point of view character and then she dies without the audience really understanding what happened to her. There are a few plausible explanations, but it's not really explored.

They did a bit better with Jon he had to choose between being a king and helping his people, but lose your girlfriend and possibly start a war. He had to chose between murdering his girlfriend or abetting a genocidal lunatic. Ok, that makes narrative sense, I guess. But then in the end, when he chose to go north rather than press his claim as king or fight about it, it wasn't presented as his choice. It just kinda happened because Grey Worm said it should, but then GW just left the scene anyway. So that wasn't written quite right, I don't think.

Tyrion chose between abetting genocide or his own life, though that wasn't very well explained either, I thought.

And Bran was just a blank slate that was never really explained at all. It's kinda satisfying for him to go from being pushed out a window to being the king, but his powers and what he can see or not see and how that matters are not really explained in the last season. So what was the point?

With Arya the choices were usually death or glory, love/security or freedom, revenge or peace, and that all makes sense and that's why she's the best character. Sansa's choices were fold under the pressure and the trauma or survive and protect her family and her people. That's at least cool and worth rooting for.

*Usually, if the audience knows where it's all going because it gradually appears to be inevitable, then it's harder to make it interesting. But it's not impossible, of course. Indeed, Breaking Bad is perhaps the best example of this. The outcome is in the title. And then Vince Gilligan has done it again with Better Call Saul. The audience knows exactly how that's going to end because, not only because of BB, but because of the black and white scenes at the start of each episode. And yet, it's still compelling because the characters are compelling. But it only has a few characters and the world it's set in is, more or less familiar to the audience. It doesn't need to take time to really explain what meth is, why it's bad, how drug cartels work, or any of that.

[Hot Pepsi]

"If you move the battle with the night king to the end of season 7. You're not talking about an extra three episodes though, you're talking about an extra 7 episodes. That's a lot of time for character development."

They could have shown Arya and the Hound riding all the way down to the south and, along the way, her figuring out that she doesn't want her whole life to just be about revenge and murder. Instead, she figures that out in the Red Keep as its collapsing in a very short conversation.

They could have done a lot more to develop Bran and his whole deal.

They could have put the destruction of Kings Landing in the middle of the season and then made Jon have to work a bit harder to get to Dany and drawn that all out a bit more, or maybe the dragon would turn on her or something like that. And then have what was decided in the final council be spread out over multiple conversations.