How are you enjoying Season 8?

[ludovica]

Casual viewers drop shows more easily and hardcore ones see things through, but they don’t necessarily sign on for spinoffs if they aren’t happy. GoT is a very hard show to finish, I get that. I can accept non-ideal endings and have done so in other things I’m a fan of. What I don’t forgive is rushing it.

I agree, I was referring to the signatures on that petition and how those do not seem congruent with the tv ratings.

 

[Mjolnir Reborn]

Whats gonna be funny is if GRRM does the same in the incoming books and have Daenarys become evil.

Im sure he did a better job with forshadowing and development.

I'm quite sure it will happen there as well as it definitely seems like one of the big story beats that George would have told D&D.

George certainly isn't one to rush things though, which I think all the book readers are painfully aware of by now, and there are two large books left. Having a genuinely good person and great potential queen fall into madness can be fantastic tragic storytelling, but you need to really build up to it. Especially since Dany is a POV character.

There's also a big difference between foreshadowing and actual character development.

 

[Iceman]

I'm quite sure it will happen there as well as it definitely seems like one of the big story beats that George would have told D&D.

George certainly isn't one to rush things though, which I think all the book readers are painfully aware of by now, and there are two large books left. Having a genuinely good person and great potential queen fall into madness can be fantastic tragic storytelling, but you need to really build up to it. Especially since Dany is a POV character.

There's also a big difference between foreshadowing and actual character development.

If George pulls a D&D and announces that the last books are going to be 100 pages it might be time to worry.

 

[8ulk87]

There's also a big difference between foreshadowing and actual character development.

Yes thats why i mentioned both.

 

[Mjolnir Reborn]

Yes thats why i mentioned both.

Just to be clear, which I perhaps wasn't in my previous post, that line was mainly intended towards the general discussion and not towards you.

 

[Havok83]

The funny thing is, Cersei has done nothing personally against the Starks or the Targaryn's yet she's the threat? Literally before episode 4 and killing Missandei, what did Cersei do to anyone not named the Sparrow or Tyrells?

I love Cersei but come on now.

Bran - she was an accomplice in his falling. Jaime may have pushed but she was just as guilty and her covering it up had catastrophic consequences

Lady - had her killed even though she was innocent

Robert - she arranged to have him killed

Ned - he was arrested for treason bc of her ripping up Robert's note. That set off a chain of events which destroyed the Starks

Ros - has her beat up thinking she was Tyrion's ****e

Tyrion - she tried to make him go down for Joffrey's murder

Dany - She broke her treaty. By doing so she committed an act of war

 

[8ulk87]

Well i agree with this guy.

There were hints from the beginning.

Also how do you balance having too much hints and trying to surprise audiences ?

Daenarys not giving a zero f when her brother dies was really telling for me personally.
I dont care how much he mistreated her. You can never be that apathetic when your brother dies even if you hate them.

 

[Mjolnir Reborn]

Well i agree with this guy.

There were hints from the beginning.

Also how do you balance having too much hints and trying to surprise audiences ?

Daenarys not givng a zero f when her brother dies was really telling for me personally.
I dont care how much he mistreated her. You can never be that apathetic when your brother dies even if you hate them.

Except the writers of the show have gone out of their way to specifically explain such things as that it's not madness or her being like her father. You don't get any stronger evidence what the writing is intended to say than the writers straight up telling us.

But even if we disregard writer intent and do take such things to be a sign of actual madness we're still back to the difference between hints and actual character development. Dany has always been ruthless to those that betray or threaten her, which is a trait she shares with tons of people in the story, and that's all they've shown. She's even been merciful to those that have betrayed her, like Jorah, which not many would be. You need to establish how she then turns her wrath on the weak and innocent when she's always gone far out of her way to help them, even at the cost of severely slowing down the path to her own goals, or risking failing to achieve them completely. She's done it even when her advisers have told her not to, and she's done it out of genuine compassion. Her story plays out in the show like some parts have been cut out.

It's kind of like if the Red Wedding played out without Robb ever offending the Freys and everyone involved on the Frey side of it had been consistently shown as people that would genuinely never do anything to hurt the Starks. That wouldn't change that the Red Wedding couldn't be a great concept, it would just be a case of where the execution didn't make it work.

 

[Donner]

Well i agree with this guy.

There were hints from the beginning.

Also how do you balance having too much hints and trying to surprise audiences ?

Daenarys not givng a zero f when her brother dies was really telling for me personally.
I dont care how much he mistreated her. You can never be that apathetic when your brother dies even if you hate them.

Yeah, you can. He sold her off, threatened to rape her repeatedly and threatened to kill her and her unborn child. **** that guy. She can absolutely be that apathetic and she has every right to be.

 

[ludovica]

Yeah, you can. He sold her off, threatened to rape her repeatedly and threatened to kill her and her unborn child. **** that guy. She can absolutely be that apathetic and she has every right to be.

I agree about despising him but she didn't even flinch a little: where did that unqueasiness come from? One does not see a melting head every day.

 

[Donner]

So what. Sansa watched dogs eat Ramsay. Arya slaughtered multiple people.

 

[MaceB]

Obviously it's a show, so it's different.. but in real life, everyone reacts to that kind of stuff differently. I'm a real slow burner when it comes to death, for example... I have this emotional defense system that just kind of shuts off after really heavy stuff happens. The sadness and the depression and missing feelings come a day later, for me.

So I never had a problem with it. Dany is not an overly emotional person. She didn't shed a tear for the man who abused her for years... and I like that about her personally. Again, I think this all foreshadows a hardness to Dany.. but madness.. I just don't see it.

 

[warhorse78]

Disappointing. Alot of action, and no substance.

 

[warhorse78]

So what. Sansa watched dogs eat Ramsay. Arya slaughtered multiple people.

But, they were not innocent people, unlike the woman and little girl Arya was trying to help, but ended up getting burned to death. It's why Arya couldn't kill Lady Crane, because she was truly innocent and didn't deserve to be killed just because some jealous girl wanted her job. Sansa also spoke against the fool from being killed by Joffery, because he was an innocent man and didn't deserve it.

 

[warhorse78]

Obviously it's a show, so it's different.. but in real life, everyone reacts to that kind of stuff differently. I'm a real slow burner when it comes to death, for example... I have this emotional defense system that just kind of shuts off after really heavy stuff happens. The sadness and the depression and missing feelings come a day later, for me.

So I never had a problem with it. Dany is not an overly emotional person. She didn't shed a tear for the man who abused her for years... and I like that about her personally. Again, I think this all foreshadows a hardness to Dany.. but madness.. I just don't see it.

You have a point. Now, maybe if someone in her company was like Melissandre was to Stannis, poisoning her ears with evil whispers to the point it takes over her good sense, I might be able to accept that.

But, I think they were trying to go for some kind of paranoia in her, but they didn't convey it well to be honest. The show could have done more in having Jaime describe what King Aerys was becoming before he went mad, joined with Bran having to also explain how everything started to unwind when he became suspicious of the Starks when Lyanna went to ride in a tornament in place of her brother, but they rushed things so bad, and focused on stuff that we didn't need, like the sex scene between Brienne and Jaime.

 

[Deck Rickard]

Well i agree with this guy.

There were hints from the beginning.

Also how do you balance having too much hints and trying to surprise audiences ?

Daenarys not giving a zero f when her brother dies was really telling for me personally.
I dont care how much he mistreated her. You can never be that apathetic when your brother dies even if you hate them.

We literally just had an episode where a guy dueled his POS brother to the death. Family ties don’t mean anything if the family member is trash. Viserys was a piece of human garbage who was physically and mentally abusive to Dany and sold her off like a possession. **** that guy.

 

[Iceman]

Well i agree with this guy.

There were hints from the beginning.

Also how do you balance having too much hints and trying to surprise audiences ?

Daenarys not giving a zero f when her brother dies was really telling for me personally.
I dont care how much he mistreated her. You can never be that apathetic when your brother dies even if you hate them.

You don’t care how much he mistreated her? The line about letting his whole army of men and horses rape her if that’s what it took would be enough for me to be apathetic about anyone’s death if they said it and meant it. The worst serial killers, torturers and most evil people ever all had/have close blood relatives. Many people have a line beyond which the blood link is invalidated/severed. I think I would have thrown up if Dany had started crying during that scene.

 

[Iceman]

We literally just had an episode where a guy dueled his POS brother to the death. Family ties don’t mean anything if the family member is trash. Viserys was a piece of human garbage who was physically and mentally abusive to Dany and sold her off like a possession. **** that guy.

This obviously foreshadows that The Hound will go mad later in the show.

 

[OutOfBoose]

I somewhat enjoy people's frustration with the final season more than the show itself. I didn't enjoy it for the past 3 seasons.

 

[8ulk87]

You don’t care how much he mistreated her? The line about letting his whole army of men and horses rape her if that’s what it took would be enough for me to be apathetic about anyone’s death if they said it and meant it. The worst serial killers, torturers and most evil people ever all had/have close blood relatives. Many people have a line beyond which the blood link is invalidated/severed. I think I would have thrown up if Dany had started crying during that scene.

This obviously foreshadows that The Hound will go mad later in the show.

FIrst of all i think its easier said than done.
Unless Viserys was continuously bad to Dany since they were little children she would have felt something.

I think that scene was meant to indicate Dany was not 100% ok in her mental state.

I think some people are also a bit mad about Dany becoming evil more than the bad execution itself.

Nevertheless i didnt mind the obviously bad execution. Its not deal breaking for me and i dont get the 65% and 45% RT scores for episodes 4 and 5.

If people wanna gripe about the mistakes so let them. Im gonna enjoy my awesome GOT finale.

 

[Lip]

I've been watching fan-favorite characters being killed off for years now.

I'm ready to see D&D finish killing the whole story today. It has been a slow death for the past two seasons. It'll be over soon.

 

[godisawesome]

Well i agree with this guy.

There were hints from the beginning.

Also how do you balance having too much hints and trying to surprise audiences ?

Daenarys not giving a zero f when her brother dies was really telling for me personally.
I dont care how much he mistreated her. You can never be that apathetic when your brother dies even if you hate them.

I think the point here may be that sometimes, a character arc being believable and brutal as it plays out in real time, with the audience seeing it as it happens, is simply the superior and better option to trying to surprise the audience.

Dany was perhaps too well known and understood by the audience for the scale of her “shocking swerve” into madness; a “shocking swerve” in and of itself works much better with characters who maintain some elements of a cipher to the audience, where we don’t know them well enough to feel like they’e acting out of character. Think of Ramsay Snow’s first appearances as “The Boy:” he was an unknown variable and mysterious while pulling his first psychological torture on Theon, so when he revealed he had led Theon on a wild goose chase just to screw with him, it was shocking... but not something that the audience couldn’t follow on a character level. It played as having more fo the character revealed, instead of having the character change.

Ned’s execution and the Red Wedding likewise follow established characterization for their perpetrators, with the shock coming more from the sheer balls of the show to actually follow through on logical concequences rather than simply doing something unexpected: Joffrey’s pettiness and tyrannical disposition provided a perfectly logical framework for why Ned should end up dead in his situation from a literary perspective, and Walder Frey’s odious nature and Roose’s creepy disposition are why an audience member hearing The Rains of Castamere during the eponymous episode begins to feel their skin crawl... particularly when Roose blatantly trolls Catelyn with his mail armor and homicidal smirk.

Dany’s fall to the dark side would probably have been better served by an arc comparable to Miguel’s in season 1 of Cobra Kai: not only do we see the “heel turn” foreshadowed, but we follow the gradual slide into darkness as it happens and see exactly why it’s happening all the way.

It’s less of a “kick to the balls” surprise and more of a “slowly stabbed with a knife then get it twisted” situation.

 

[Donner]

But, they were not innocent people, unlike the woman and little girl Arya was trying to help, but ended up getting burned to death. It's why Arya couldn't kill Lady Crane, because she was truly innocent and didn't deserve to be killed just because some jealous girl wanted her job. Sansa also spoke against the fool from being killed by Joffery, because he was an innocent man and didn't deserve it.

And Viserys wasn't innocent.

 

[8ulk87]

For as much i understand the frustration people have with Dany going mad (which personally didnt bother me) i cannot for the love of God understand why people whine about the Jaime arc.

Who said or where it is written that his redemption couldnt be undone ?

There are a lot of real life cases of people going back to their addcition after years of being sober. It happens all the time.

People going back to the dark side again after previously being redeemed. Why is that so hard to accept ?

Why does everything has to have a happy ending ? Why ?

 

[lime]

One think I hate the most. Weiss and Benioff have made such a great work on the show for the past 8 years, yet the first time they let you down you hate them. No appreciation for their fantastic work bringing the show to life? 7 great season - 1 bad one and you hate them? Is the One that bigger than the 7 great ones? This is such an ugly hate. If it was not for them, this show was not going to exist.

This is the perfect example of how horrible people are. Do 10 good deeds and 1 bad one, and you will be remembered only for the 1 bad one.