• A Song of Ice and Fire /Game of Thrones Discussion V2: Winter Is Here
    999 replies, posted
The common thread here is that they killed off all the most interesting, well written characters. Eventually, you're going to reap what you sow on that front. No more Tywin, no more Stannis, no more Robb, no more Ned, no more Littlefinger. The characters that more or less drove the story and made it what it was are gone.
I'm probably giving too much credit to the show's writing at this point, but I honestly think Varys wants Jon on the throne because he knows full well how easy he'd be to manipulate which suits Varys just fine. He indirectly said as much when he said Daenerys would be too strong for him (which is a crock of shit anyway. Daenerys NEEDS someone there to temper her, especially now that everyone else is fuckin' dead.) I'm still hoping they have an 11th hour "HAH! Gotcha" and they don't go the obvious route, but I'm not counting on it at this point. Also, if the 3rd "WTF" moment is Dany going Mad Queen, I'm going to be sorely disappointed. There's gotta be something more surprising than that.
I thought that was from BTS footage?
Yeah it was, i found that out after posting it. Whoops
I'm fine with Characters that i live dying off or that happening, if it HAS A POINT. meanwhile the shit that's been happening this seasn barely has any semblance of logic to it.
someone pointed out on /got/ that Missandei's death as a woman bound in chains at the mercy of someone else basically defeats the purpose of her story arc in becoming an independent person finding love and wanting to help of her own volition after being freed both literally and emotionally by Dany and that if she had even attempted to do anything or at least end things herself before the mountain could it would fit the whole freedom angle a lot better
The entire episode after the feast can be characterized as sloppy
I can only think of... like 3 characters the past 2 seasons that's had a deserved death off the top of my head. Obviously I'm talking Theon mainly, most of the deaths have been Littlefinger tier or just killing off characters they don't know what to do with. I guess Beric? The idea of him dying to fulfill his "purpose" is good but the actual scene was a little underwhelming and on a similar note Melisandre
Well there's always a Song of Ice and Fire and its spin offs. If you want to read something more finished, though, i'd also recommend the Witcher saga. The magical elements are a bit more involved and have a bit more spectacle than GoT, but it still scratches that low/dark fantasy adventure itch. I've heard the First Law is pretty good, too, but i haven't read it, though apparently it's supposed to be the bleakest of them all so i dunno if that's what you're looking for. also it's nothing like game of thrones and a comic but i will take every opportunity i have to tell everyone to go read unsounded cuz it's great and it's FREE
There's a fanfiction where joffrey is the hero (even after he cuts off Ned Starks head and tortures prostitutes) and its written far better than this show is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUePZZDLPrE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJptaHqta1Q
Well watched ep4 yesterday, really sucked they didn't include some neat flashback when Jon asked Bran to explain their secret. They could've gone into a bit of the lore right when they cut it, just to provide some actual depth and maybe counter some of that shoddy writing but guess we'll have to go back to suffering through this soapy drama. Also, I'm hoping Jamie is just really confused and will turn around at the last second.. Man I remember being exited for the entire week till a new episode aired, now I'm just shuddering at the thought about what the fuck will happen next lol
I spent the previous month and a half watching the series for the first time so I could catch up in time for the finale. The scene with Dany and Cersie stuck out like a sore thumb when I first watched it, and the ambush by Euron seems pretty half assed after thinking about it for a while. Makes me wonder what newcomers think about the new season, and not just those who have been waiting for a conclusion for years.
Even if the water scene made sense at all (it didn't) it was so abrupt and poorly executed it stands out as some of the worst writing I've seen in a high budget production. It's as though they realized the show was popular, then made "popular" changes without realizing why the show was a hit to begin with. Newcomers won't understand the context, e.g. changes to the locality of scenes as with the castle gate won't be as jarring as to fans.
I wonder how many of the plot decisions are the outline they got from George, and the poor execution of them is due to them trying to fit it into the time frame they wanted. Just because D&D not wanting to commit the time to adding the intricacy required to making things like Euron's ambush at Dragonstonemake sense seems a lot more probable to me than an entire production's approval staff signing off on a plot with logic problems without recognizing it's flaws. As someone who works on TV shows, I gotta stress, production constraints are fucking real and can have a devastating effect on a story. Unlike a book, there is more to be considered in a show's production than the quality of the story. You have more than just the author, some beta readers/critique partners, and an editor involved. Each narrative choice could affect the lives of a giant crew, including cast members who maybe don't want to play the same character for over 10 years. Can you imagine being an actor waiting on-hold for a script to be finished if it took D&D as long as it takes George to write a book? George started writing A Song of Ice and Fire because he was tired of writing under those constraints. I can't say it's too surprising that trying to wrap a production is getting sloppy when the story was structured with none of those constraints in mind. To be honest, I think that in order to avoid the rapid pacing we're seeing now, the earlier seasons would have had to be simplified even more than they were, simply because they built too much to be wrapped up cleanly in the second half. I know it sounds lame to make excuses for a show's flaws based on such mundane reasoning, but I honestly believe that production constraints (I.E. careers and money) are a far more likely cause than simple, sheer stupidity.
I kind of just realized now that Gendry is legitimized as a Baratheon, he has a better claim to the throne than both Dany and Jon
Well no because the whole point is that Targaryens had the throne and Robert usurped it. In the logic of who "deserves" the throne, it's certainely Jon. Ofc the whole point is that the person with the bigger army is king, but yeah under the logic of who "deserves" the throne it's not a bastard Baratheon, legitimised by the authority of the Targaryen queen.
I only just started watching the series as a whole just as season seven was airing. I've enjoyed it thus far and at this point I just want to see the show through to its end. The Night King's death has left me a little demoralized toward the ending of the show (even if I did like the episode and don't mind Arya being the one to do it) simply because White Walkers are an infinitely bigger threat. With this last episode, I'm just glad the show is ending soon because the writers are clearly doing things for shock value or because they don't know what to do with a character (Littlefinger's death, for example) or make characters appear uncharacteristically dumb or short-sighted for something shocking to happen (Dany sitting upon Drogon surrounded by wights that proceed to climb on the dragon knocking Dany off and leading to Jorah's death). Euron killing Rhaegal doesn't feel shocking in the way that it should, it just feels like the writers artificially leveling the playing field to make the fight against Cersei seem more dire (and possibly to make Dany more imposing when she tries to claim the throne or some symbolism relating to Jon). I could go on, but it's probably redundant at this point. I still enjoy the series and will likely watch it again one day (although this last season is starting to feel like Mass Effect 3 which pretty much killed that series for me), but I can feel that there would be a much better series if GRRM had finished the books and they could follow that rather than relying on D&D's creative liberties. Perhaps in about a decade or two there will be some reboot and GRRM will hopefully have finished the books (or died and someone else finish it based on his notes or something). By that time I'll probably have read the books, too.
Ahem. WHY DIDN'T CERSEI'S BALLISTAS AND ARCHERS JUST TAKE OUT DANY AND HER WHOLE CREW WHILE THEY WERE STANDING IN THE SAND?
Bothered me the whole scene, the lannisters never respected parleys or honor if it got in the way of getting rid of ennemies, why now.
At first I thought the same thing but she is trying to make the people fear Dany and think of her as their savior, so it would kind of make sense so that way the civillians don't find out she struck down people trying to negotiate diplomacy
she blew up the sept of baelor and killed thousands of people would she really give a shit
I was almost yelling at my screen for her to just grab Cersei and jump off the edge with her, she was standing so damn close and the guards didn't even seem to be in arms reach. Even if it failed it would have been a better ending for her.
To be fair, the baelor shit could believably be blamed on the Mad King putting all that shit down there in the first place, especially since no lannister soldiers were there. I mean anyone who knows Cersei would know it was her, but it's enough plausible deniability for the common folk and perhaps lesser lords to not make big political decision based on it. Just take a look at modern politics for how even the thinnest technical plausible deniability allows people to get away with shit. Lannister soldiers annihilating the enemy at parley wouldn't have had even that thin veil of deniability, making future politics impossible for Cersei.
Shoot, I left out Arya's Nymeria. When they end up unfortunately separated, book Arya doesn't give up on reuniting with her. While Arya is in Braavos, she dreams at night that she's the leader of a huge wolf pack. You hear about a wolf pack led by a giant wolf ravaging Lannister soldiers repeatedly. The implication is that Arya wargs into Nymeria on a nightly basis and doesn't quite realize it. Additionally, while warging Nymeria, Arya stumbles upon the corpse of her mother Catelyn washed up on the riverbank after the Red Wedding. And if that wasn't enough, you know that awful fight sequence between Arya and the Waif in Braavos? In the books Arya wins that fight because she has a secret ace up her sleeve: she's begun actively warging into cats on purpose to see in the dark, a skill she learned while blinded by the Faceless Men.
(Episode 4 spoilers) https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/108621/7cba0f85-f508-41c2-bd15-55cff6754e89/image.png
Since I apparently have no self-control whatsoever, I've been following the leaks on r/Freefolk and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that while some of what's being described is probably real, there's so much contradiction and comically bad ideas that, even with the worst we've seen from D&D, there's gotta be some misinformation and fake leaks being spread to throw people off the trail. At least I sure hope so.
After E4, I am ready for D+D to just break the 4th wall and sit on the throne, and declare themselves king and king.
I just refuse to believe they're going to fail so badly at the final stretch. There's too many people involved and even if they just straight-up pandered to the fans and gave a Disney-esque (by GRRM standards anyway) ending, at least a decent chunk of people would be satisfied. If the leaks pan out...I don't know anyone that would be happy. Guess we'll see. Hoping for the best.
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