A Song of Ice and Fire /Game of Thrones Discussion V2: Winter Is Here
999 replies, posted
For me it's less that all those people survived, it's that main characters were consistently put into situations that should have killed them several times over. We saw those first few rows of Unsullied get swallowed by a sprinting pile of wights and get absolutely demolished yet Jamie, Brienne, Tormund, Podrick, and Greyworm were also in the first row or thereabouts and somehow managed to emerge relatively unscathed. It's one thing for the characters to make it past impossible odds, but when you clearly show literally everyone around them dying, the plot armor becomes all too obvious. I feel this could have been fixed easily if they simply showed a handful of other unnamed Winterfell defenders holding their own alongside the primary characters; at least then it wouldn't seem like there was special treatment being handed out.
D&D throwing everything away for shock value is what annoys me, I can get around everything else.
I'm half expecting Dany to go crazy in the span of 15 minutes and have Jon finish her, because D&D have given up and mailed it in to just meeting plot points.
Well, they could at least mention it once during the entirety of season 7. Arya knew what happened, maybe she wouldn't have been all "BT dubs Sis I killed all the Freys" but she might've mentioned that she heard about it or something.
Jon and Sansa haven't even acknowledged the fact that the Freys are gone. Or how about how, with Walder dead, all 3 of the biggest participants of the Red Wedding are dead? The northmen claimed Jon avenged the Red Wedding, but that was just for taking Winterfell back from the Boltons. The Freys were still alive and kicking when Jon was declared King in the North.
By the way, Im just assuming at this point Season 7 isnt spoiler-tag worthy.
https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/1b1315cb44988e9537951a532f4739f5
The plot.
It sounds like the cast are gonna be watching Episode 5 together, it will be kinda fun if they record it.
I'll be legitimately pissed if they make Daenerys go full 'Mad Queen.' I've seen tons of people suggest she's already on her way, but all I see is a woman that genuinely believes (and until S8E1 had no reason to think otherwise) she has the right to rule the Seven Kingdoms and isn't shy about putting her foot down with dissenters. But really, what's the absolute worst she's done in the last two seasons? I'd say it was burning Randall & Dickon Tarly, and even that wasn't anywhere approaching madness or even cruelty. She felt, in the moment, that she had to show she wasn't fucking around. And y'know what, she even seemed to regret it once she saw Sam's reaction. I don't see the paranoia, I don't see the cruelty, and I don't see the malice that would need to be present for me to think she was going to turn. In my eyes, it's WAY too late for them to make the character go that direct.
How about after she took Meereen and order the slavers to be crucified like the slaves she saw on the road in?
Burning Randall and Dickon was absolutely a "Mad Queen" move because she could have very easily just had them executed or imprisoned like a normal ruler. Instead she chose to go the overkill option on a defeated army who was essentially negotiating surrender, immediately after trying to disprove the fact that she wasn't some harsh burner and murderer that Cersei told the troops she was.
Despite what Tyrion had tried to persuade her into, multiple times, she opted to burn both of them in dragon fire. She literally proved everything Cersei had put in their heads.
She didn't regret what she did when she was confronted by Sam, she just gave him the basic respect of someone who had lost family members.
The cruelty has been apparent for many seasons in the ways that she handles punishments. The paranoia hasn't come through yet but that's just because we are only just after the Night King, and I expect it to be addressed in S8E4. How she handles the siege of King's Landing will be the full reveal of how "Mad Queen" she has gone. Primarily how she uses the dragons.
This brings up some good points, to be honest I think Danerys could believably be at odds with Jon. Jon's had to kill people who defied him too, but he did it quickly and as a matter of course, he didn't choose the most flashy and painful way possible to do it.
Hell, he straight up prevented that exact thing happening to Mance Rayder.
Well, I guess we'll see. To my eyes, the show hasn't adequately put her on the path to being a Mad Queen to the point where it will feel more like a heel-turn than a natural evolution of the character. She's been an actual hero more than once from S7E5 onwards, including this last episode. With 4 hours left...I don't know, I'm not convinced they could pull that off. Unless she straight up burns down King's Landing and murders half the civilian population of course which I'm hoping isn't what they're planning on.
You could argue that Jon was doing things because it was the rule of law, and that was what the law required him to do. He also bore the brunt of the effects, so to have him be the one to pass the judgement was fair. When Dany executed the Randy and Dick (my new names for them), she did it for spectacle, and despite better judgement. The alternative was to show she wasn't what Cersei had told all the troops she was, and to be a benevolent force that Westeros hasn't seen in a long time.
But I do fully expect Jon and Dany to have conflict about the right way to go about doing things when they go for King's Landing. I would imagine Dany will want to do something ridiculous like burn down the Red Keep because Cersei won't give up and "I AM THE MOTHER OF DRAGONS, AND SHE WON'T BENDY KNEE", and then Jon would be like "No, stop. There are civilians there and people watching."
I don't think Jon having a more proper claim to the throne will change the above. I think the path is that they would rule together equally, until she goes Mad Queen.
I don't think it would bother me as much if it didn't come in at the last second, it would feel like the pinnacle of dishonest story telling from D&D and turn the show into an utter tragedy for most of the viewership
Not to mention that, if they mishandle it (which is less unlikely than I think we all would like to consider), they're gonna pull a Mass Effect 3 and make a huge chunk of the viewership feel like they just wasted 9 years.
I think Episode 4 will have to be the turning point for however this is all going to end.
The previous two posts describe EP3's ending perfectly, though.
It's too late to save the show.
You make a good point. The ending of Ep3 didn't really bother me at all beyond being a bit anticlimactic, but other people have (supposedly) sworn off the show for good. r/asoiaf is having an especially spectacular meltdown. So, yeah, it's all possible I just -really- hope it's not how it all pans out. We'll know in 2 1/2 weeks I guess.
I've made my peace that's what is gonna happen, too often I've read books, and played games were bittersweet endings just fail and make the audience feel like its wasted. Endgame and LoTR are a few exceptions and D&D just ain't that good.
I'm proud to say that S8E3 didn't ruin the show for me, I am OK with the outcome, and I will enjoy the remainder of the show if it continues this course.
There were some flaws in military strategy across the board that bugged me, but overall, I was pleased. And, like someone else in this thread said prior, none of these things (minus parking Drogon in a horde of undead and wondering why he was getting overcome with wights) bothered me until after the show was over.
The only things I remember bugging me was that scene in your spoiler, and the fact that they put their lines of defenses not only outside of the wall, but ass-backwards on top of that with troops BEHIND the siege engines.
Plus the Unsullied apparently don't know what a shield wall actually is, which is awfully silly.
Oh the ranks were so fucked up. Unsullied made a pike wall where they stood about 4 feet apart from each other. Blind calvary charge instead of using them like the Rohirrim and flanking. Dragons not doing anything except 4 strafing runs when they should have just been circling Winterfell constantly. Archers not firing except twice when the battle started, and then when they come to the walls. And not putting pikes on the walls when they started climbing them. All you have to do is touch them with Dragonglass...
Plate armor seemed to be extremely easy to impale this episode as well.
Some spoilers:
https://i.imgur.com/sR051yI.mp4
So if any of you are paying attention to the leaking scene, it's turned into a total shitshow to the point were it's a meta Game of Thrones
I think HBO is playing with people, and all of that stuff about fake scenes is (hopefully) true.
Leaking scene?
Sorry I edited my post to clarify it a bit better
I haven't watched the Episode 3 BTS video, but I read somewhere that it showed them filming one of the fake scenes, so It is true.
Yeah, I've been taking a glance at some of the stuff posted on /r/Freefolk and the like. So far I've heard everything from Jon & Dany dying to flying off in the sunset on the back of a dragon while ruling as King & Queen. And Tyrion dies! Or does he? Seems a bit of room for possibility: people might be just making things up . Or it's true what they said and multiple variants were filmed to throw people off.
I really wish they didn't go with the idea of the Night King trying to erase all history and memory from the World. Cause it doesn't even work with what they've been hinting out throughout the series.The idea i thought they were building towards is that the Night King is sorta of a personifcation of all the dead who have been lost to war and conflict. That would've added to the idea that the Night King being a super weapon gone rogue, its literally the Dead taking vengeance against the living for causing them to die a needless death. And with their twisted logic, in order to stop this senseless conflict all together, they need to kill off all life.
And further hints to this idea is that most of the dead that the White Walkers used during the earlier seasons. Were the corpses and the remains of soldiers throughout the ages. The Nameless, the cannon fodder that were chopped down, their names and honors lost to the annals of time. Even more frustratingly, that would've worked great towards the show's themes of the horrors of warfare, destruction, and calamity. The White Walkers are that taken to the extreme.
Maybe they'll expand more of this in the later episodes of this season, but that shitty Deus Ex Machina in ep3 just put a sour taste in my mouth.
I mean, it's easy to be disappointed if you think up a plot you'd like best and the showrunners don't do that, but I think at that point you're setting yourself up for it.
major spoilers within
https://imgur.com/kIsYCW0
https://www-theverge-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/5/4/18529329/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-spinoff-series-update-fire-and-blood-book?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2019%2F5%2F4%2F18529329%2Fgeorge-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-spinoff-series-update-fire-and-blood-book
I don't know how successful the spin-offs will be, but I'd love to see a movie or something about Roberts Rebellion. Probably doesn't need it's own series, though. I just wanna see Robert crush some breastplate with his battle axe. I mean just look at this cosplay
https://i.imgur.com/HWVWaz5.jpg
I can picture robert chasing someone through a doorway and he can't get through because his antlers are huge
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.