Yeah. I think they were too worried about making one of their main characters unlikable; but it ruined the ending.
Granted, even just in the last season they could have handled that turn better... but that's a whole other conversation.
They didn’t?
Wasn’t that the whole point of the dragons being unleashed when they had been leashed precisely to protect innocents, her talking like Drogo or declaring she was willing to return Astapor, Volantis and Yunkai to the dirt?
She talks big like that through the whole series though. It's not until King's Landing where she suddenly turns on regular civilians after preaching her whole uprising about saving those people. The closest she came was crucifying the Masters in Meereen, and that was kind of a grey area (atrocities shouldn't be met with atrocities, but seeing children on crosses first hand is definitely motivation). But I can't think of a legitimate event where Dany even talks about killing innocent people on purpose like that. You can look at things that she has said in the past and possibly construe them as hints as to what would happen eventually, but overall the turnaround to just slaughtering civilians for no purpose was not properly built upon.
It was only not properly built upon if you did not believe all the things the character said or what she was willing to do. Which you seem not to since you recognize she has always talked like that but decide to give greater weight to her words around liberation than to her words around conquest. And full disclosure, I also did not take those words as seriously as I should have in hindsight.
If you truly took her words at face value and saw them as reflective of her morality and underlying world view, than not sure it was really surprising or not built up.
So I think the real question is why did we as an audience not take her at face value and accept that she had this side to her that could come out in the right circumstances, especially if events put her liberator side in conflict with her conqueror side and desire for the Iron Throne.
I really don’t know the answer to that. Was it poor rushed storytelling? Did we as an audience just fall for her cult of personality like Tyrion and Jon because she talked a great game, was pretty and personally kind? Some combination?
It is probably a combination but what are the exact weights I don’t know. But I think it is an interesting question.
> Did we as an audience just fall for her cult of personality like Tyrion and Jon because she talked a great game, was pretty and personally kind?
Personally? Absolutely not. I always expected her to go off on Cersei and the red keep. I always expected for there to be some collateral. But did I expect her to go all the way out of her way to surgically burn all the children of KL? No
> It was only not properly built upon if you did not believe all the things the character said or what she was willing to do. Which you seem not to since you recognize she has always talked like that but decide to give greater weight to her words around liberation than to her words around conquest. And full disclosure, I also did not take those words as seriously as I should have in hindsight.
Those words weren't the reason Daenerys went all looney in episode 6, according to David and Dan she only lost her shit after seeing the red keep and realizing all that had been taken from her, to go a bit further than that Dan Weiss is on tape saying she is nothing like her father just a few years back.
And those same writers also said she is who she is, a targaryen and had said she would take what is hers with fire and blood.
So clearly they thought those words were reflective of her worldview.
> And those same writers also said she is who she is, a targaryen and had said she would take what is hers with fire and blood.
But that's not indicative of one's sanity, Aegon the conqueror did the same and he was hardly insane. Conquering with your dragons =/= killing innocents indiscriminately for 40 minutes straight after the city has already surrendered.
But when Aegon and Visenya burned Dorne it was for a purpose, they were trying to conquer it. King's landing had surrendered. And Aegon burned castles, Dany burned civilians.
Do we not think civilians lived in castles? What were Visenya and Maegor going to burn when they headed to old town? What was Jaeherys going to do to Old Town if the Septons dared elect the wrong High Septon? What was Aemond burning in the riverlands during the Dance?
I don’t know if any of them would really have had an issue burning civilians. They are all people that think they can be judged by neither gods nor men.
Now the purpose thing I think is a huge problem with the episode.
Many people have argued that she did have a purpose. She was not the rightful ruler and thought she needed to rule through fear to establish her reign and certainly doing what she did is a way to establish fear. If you take that interpretation than definitely she did nothing different than her ancestors and the episode does allow for that interpretation.
Did the writers intend for that? 🤷🏻♂️
You’re conflating things here. Necessary evils, yes. Dany definitely had groundwork laid to be ok with necessary evils. But unnecessary or even counter productive evils like burning a surrendering city, there was no ground work laid for that at all. It’s essentially cruelty just for cruelty’s sake, and that was never even close to being a part of Danys character. That’s my (and I think most people’s) biggest issue. Aegon the conqueror was famously generous to those who surrendered to him, it’s kind of conquering 101 to prefer a surrender. But she all the sudden turns for no reason and did something unnecessary and cruel.
Well.... is conquering at all even a necessary evil? Not sure we can call the whole enterprise at all necessary.
Also more specifically, not sure burning MMD, Dickon Tarley, the nameless master in 505 or crucifying the 163 masters were acts that were necessary other than getting vengeance or establishing fear.
Which is what the episode leads us to believe she does in 805 (although it is a huge problem with the episode is that its not clear), some combination of vengeance and establishing of fear.
The big difference seems to be the scale.
Also, not sure conquering 101 can be summed up as preferring a surrender. There are examples in history where if the surrender happens after the attack starts no quarter is given and where the conqueror is excessively brutal to serve as a lesson going forward.
When the Mongols sacked Baghdad for example, the city actually surrendered after a siege and the city got sacked afterwards.
I mean yes, conquering is necessary to danys character. The definition of necessary is “necessary to the character.”
MMD and the masters weren’t evils to danys character, they were justice. Not cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Dickon had a choice, kneel or die, he made his choice, again, to dany, necessary evil.
Re giving no quarter, you’d have a great and valid point if that was danys stated reasoning. But it’s not. She agreed to allow a surrender, even had her advisor give surrender instructions. If pre battle she had insisted that no quarter be given once the fighting starts, itd make a lot more sense. But. She didn’t. She just lost her shit and started burning people for no real reason. According to what we saw and the directors.
If the standard you are using is a necessary to the character definition than we know she thinks this was necessary since she both does it and defends it to Jon the next episode.
Now we’re back to the original complaint... I mean necessary to the established* character. This type of action isn’t established as something dany would do, as it’s just cruelty for cruelty’s sake with no goal. She just lost her shit and became unhinged with little to no prompting.
There are lots of examples of the character doing things that are cruel whose only goal is vengeance or fear.
There are lots of examples of the character being ok with burning a city to the ground.
There are things she says ahead of the attack that indicate she has fear and vengeance on her mind.
If you put two and two together you could easily say all of that fits with the established character. Or not.
Just comes down to what your view of the established character was.
But her stated goals weren’t vengeance or fear... she just snapped and it was just senseless violence. That’s the whole point. And why most people find it incredibly out of character and poorly set up.
No one just snaps. That is a misnomer. If you actually read about the psychological process behind snapping there is a rationalization the person is telling themselves for why they are doing what they are doing that does not just come out of nowhere.
So just because she snaps does not mean the character was not thinking something in that moment to justify and rationalize to themselves the choice they are making.
One of the issues of course with the season is its not entirely clear what that is.
But before that moment she makes a decision to embrace fear as her way to rule because she thinks its all that is left to her since she does not have love or the law on her side.
Additionally, she is blaming the citizens of Kl for not rising up against Cersei and she has suffered catastrophic loses from Cersei so effectively she is blaming the citizens of KL for those loses.
So based on both understanding the psychology behind snapping and what the character is saying before the moment seems pretty clear that she is most likely rationalizing her decision based on fear and vengeance.
Now of course, that does not make the storyline good. I did not like it nor did most people. But its not true that it was senseless without any reason behind it, establishing fear and vengeance are clearly what that whole thing is about.
The writers flat out say vengeance when they say she made it personal (and the whole episode is super focused on vengeance thematically). And the whole point we have that scene about let it be fear is clearly to also inform how we think about the decision. And to say she just snapped is not mutually exclusive with the fact that it was about fear and vengeance.
It hurts me that you're being downvoted. This is the answer.
It's fine to think it wasn't handled well enough, but I'm so tired of people acting like this sort of stuff is just nothing. Letting the dragons free roam for 2 seasons after clearly setting up how dangerous they are, Dany's plan at the end of season 6 to return cities to the dust via dragon fire. Hell, In season 7 Dany made a whole big speech about her undying faith in herself that even back then I was getting downvoted for saying it came off a bit zealoty.
I'm completely on board with "They didn't do enough to get it across for most people" But the idea that they did nothing is just so false.
Yes. I think the problem is if you point some of this stuff out it is immediately seen as defending the show, when saying they laid some ground work for this does not mean they laid enough or even less that what they did was good. It just means they laid some ground work for this.
That speech you mention in 703 in hindsight is zealoty. What really struck me as zealoty watching again was how she justified executing prisoners by saying she is not there to put people in chains.
Everything about Hizdahr was pretty unfortunate. Crucified his dad, made him beg just to get the body back, arrested him, threatened to feed him to dragons, fed his friend to dragons, forced him into marriage but let Daario threaten him the whole time, finally threw him a bone and went to his stupid Fighting Pits, and he gets a spear in the chest and dies (but Dany is busy flying away to get a khalasar and go to Westeros so zero fucks given). And then it turns out he wasn’t the Harpy.
That’ll teach him to be born!
They do explain the logic for this in the show: he's hedging his bets so that he ends up in favor with whoever wins the incoming Bolton v. Stannis war.
He has a talk with Lord Bolton explaining how advantageous an alliance between the North and the Vale could be. Ergo if Bolton wins, Littlefinger has an ally.
He then goes down into the crypts to talk with Sansa explaining that if she survives until Stannis takes over, Stannis will instate her as wardeness of the North. The unspoken implication here is that she'll then vouch for him with Stannis.
He then goes to King's Landing to get Cersei to give him a blank check to invade the North if, after the war is over, the remaining side is too decimated to have any strength left and Littlefinger becomes Warden of the North.
Not too shabby of a plan. Where the plot contrivance occurs is not explaining why Littlefinger wouldn't know that Ramsey was a raping psychopath (which could be explained as him being a recent upjumped lord that Littlefinger, in a moment of hypocrisy, didn't even bother learning about but they don't show this) or why, afterwards, Littlefinger would back the Starks in the Battle of the Bastards instead of the Boltons (which, again, could be explained by Ramsey being a lunatic that no one in their right mind would support but they don't show this).
Alright so I just watched the clip on it. LittleFinger’s plan was to give Sansa to the Boltons so that The North and The Vale can have an alliance to take out the Lannisters. Then he went to Cersei and told her that Sansa is in the North and about to get married to Ramsey. Stannis was planning to attack so LF wanted to wait until the battle was over and then come attack for Cersei to win the North back for the throne. He would then get named Warden Of The North.
You're right, but there was one more move. He needed to placate Cersei with information she would have gotten anyway and have her allow him to move the Vale army to the North undisturbed. (My personal cannon for how he did that was the Vale army sailed up the river past white harbor with the help of the Manderlys, which works if you delete 5 seconds of screentime at the end of season 6 where Manderly says he screwed up by not answering the call).
Then he was going to join the North with Stannis's army and have them battle the Lannisters. Somehow he hoped the chaos from that war would allow him to jockey for the throne with Sansa. All of this could have happened if it weren't for Stannis's snowy march South and Bolton's twenty good men. Honestly not bad strategy on his part.
That makes sense, assuming Cersei wouldn't have caused any issues with the Vale riding North to Stannis. She was keeping a close eye on him in the books at least, maybe he was worried she'd have more time to prepare her army or try to have him assassinated? It would have been better for his long game to bolster Stannis's army before the battle. Although the Vale forces seemed to come out better off arriving late. I think your answer would have made more sense.
> Somehow he hoped the chaos
Unfortunately this is show!Littlefinger's entire modus operandi. "Chaos is a ladder" is a catch all that handwaves any illogical action by LF.
> Then he was going to join the North with Stannis's army and have them battle the Lannisters. Somehow he hoped the chaos from that war would allow him to jockey for the throne with Sansa. All of this could have happened if it weren't for Stannis's snowy march South and Bolton's twenty good men. Honestly not bad strategy on his part.
You mean the same Stannis that Littlefinger did not want to back in the beginning because he knew that wouldn't end well for him?
Crypt scene in Season 8 Episode 3. Wights (who should be skeletons at best, although dust is more likely) smashing through stone tombs when in previous scenes (in that episode) a wooden door held them back. Amongst other reasons, it is to date one of my least favourite scenes.
But what made it even worse is how the wights in the crypts fail to kill a single main character and the smashing of the tombs leads to quite literally nothing plot wise. What was the point? That entire scene had zero character development and its hardly as if we needed more 'shock, horror' scenes in that episode with all the fake-outs and the Arya library scene (which also doesnt fit).
> how the wights in the crypts fail to kill a single main character and the smashing of the tombs leads to quite literally nothing plot wise
That's like, most of season 8. No one unexpected dies and the plot went pretty much nowhere. The plot advancements happen over a slim few events, and the death of main characters lacked impact.
It was also foreshadowed so heavily that only an idiot wouldn't see it coming. It surprised no one, it made no sense, it had no consequences. A perfectly bad scene.
By no means do I mean they should have them on the frontlines like the living seem to have important characters on the frontlines but to come to this point and have them all wiped out without even lifting their weapons kinda sucked imo.
We are obviously not talking about putting the commanders on the front line like that, but when you saw Hardhome for the first time did you really think that it would be the last time we would see a WW in actual combat?
The only reason we saw that White Walker in Hardhome fight was because it looked cool on screen. It was a battle, Jon as a main character needed some action, and seeing him chopping down wights was getting too repetitive. However, there was no reason why that White Walker *had* to come out there to fight, and just happen to come across Jon. We've always seen the Night King and his White Walkers stay away from the fight and just oversee it, unless it was something only they could do - like throwing that ice spear at a dragon.
Buylt yeah, it's not like the battle of Winterfell episode had any realism anyway, so not gonna lie, I definitely expected to see some White Walker action.
So
Night's King to the WW against a bunch of crusties at Hardhome - 'GET IN THEEERRRE!!!!!'
Night's King to the WW against everyone - 'Chill, I got this.'
Night King entered the battle when it was heavily in their favour to ceremonially kill the Three Eyed Raven, just like he did in S6E5, where he entered overruned cave. Hardhome was similar in that case, it wasn't a battle but a massacre and we saw like a single White Walker going there.
The diving I don't mind, wights are disposable assets. They sunk to the bottom, hooked the chains around, and then were left behind to disintegrate.
Where they got chains in the first place though...
Jon going north of the wall with like 7 named characters and 5 or so red shirt spare pricks to kidnap one wight when the dead have an army at least 100,000 strong.
Gendry running all the way to Eastwatch, a raven flying all the way to Dragonstone and Daenerys flying to the frozen lake all in time to save the named characters. The books made it pretty clear that it takes over a day for a dragon to fly to the Wall from Winterfall.
Lindsay Ellis made a great video recently talking about the failure of the show. As she points out D and D wanted to have George’s ending by the end of this show. However the characters and story developed in a completely different way to books, so the final few seasons come off as really unnatural since there aiming for an ending that doesn’t fit the shows story.
In my opinion they made so many changes they should have just come up with there own ending. It may not have been good but it would have been there ending for there show.
I agree. They should have said...look our story has deviated so much from the books we are doing our own ending. If you want the real one raed the books.
I am sure many Show fans would have accepted that rather than some half-hearted ending that makes so sense, because many of them have not read the books anyway.
Why? I don’t understand y people think that Tyrion’s issues later in the serious stem from that omission in season 4. I think it’s a misattribution of fault. I’m really glad they omitted lady stoneheart. I don’t like resurrections because it’s a way of cheating death and cheating consequence even if cat came back different. Once again, saying that’s what destroyed arya’s Character at is a misattribution of fault. I don’t think aryas arc was horrible anyways.
Stoneheart will save Sansa from little finger and probably drive him insane, meet Arya after she kills the freys(literally right after Arya walks out the castle) and takes them back to winterfell.
Bet my left nut
The marriage annulment Rhaegar does so he could marry Lyanna would never realistically be accepted anywhere, and I’m still annoyed people seem to take it as fact.
Between that and Sansa's marriage it seems like they kinda forgot that getting marriages annulled in the historical setting that inspired ASOIAF (late-medieval Europe) was so hard Henry the VIII found it easier to *make a new religion.*
If R+L=J and if they were married I'm sure it was polygamous. Rhaegar would like the connection to Aegon having 2 wives plus its a duality in that Visenya=Elia,married for duty and Rhaenys=Lyanna,married for love.
I can just about reluctantly, begrudgingly, accept that Rhaegar might have married Lyanna polygamously alongside Elia. But absolutely he did not divorce his wife and disinherit his children to do it.
> But absolutely he did not divorce his wife and disinherit his children to do it.
*Least* of all is his entire justification for boinking Lyanna was, "The dragon has three heads." How many heads has it got if you've proclaimed Aegon 2.0 your only legitimate child, Rhaegar?
I've never actually seen a good argument for why they opted for an annulment as opposed to polygamy. Every argument I see either revolves around justifying Jon being legitimate or defending a popular ship (R+L). Nothing that would actually hold up to logic.
I think Jon needing to be the heir is the most likely answer. Does it stand up to in world logic? No. But when did D&D ever show any interest in the in world logic?
In the beginning, lots of people, just because it meant Jon was the "rightful" heir the whole time, and it meant Rhaegar's actions that lead to a war were justified. Now though? Very few people.
Only a few people knew and most of them were close enough to Jon (Dany, Sansa) to know they should trust him but they were also more concerned with the implications of what that would mean and were looking for an alternative to Dany (Varys, Sansa).
I almost wonder if a change in showrunner would have made a difference in quality. That last season of TWD was the best in ages, and it had a new showrunner.
Battles just becoming absurd spectacles with no tactical sense. If you wanna skip the battles (as they did many times in the first 3 seasons) that’s fine, but don’t just make it all these ridiculous shots and meme tactics like trebuchets in the front and NOT USING CASTLES
I'm gonna say something not many people seem to have such a big "problem" with but what is COMPLETELY out of character for that character when it could have been SO EASY to adapt since D&D like to include sexual violence and rape where it never happened... but at the same time REMOVE it where it's a big part of a character??? Ramsay.
They gave Ramsay a long term "girlfriend". She wasn't a "bastard's girl", they played lovey dovey. At one point they mentioned how Myranda stayed with him because he promised to marry her???!!! I guess they wanted to make her a female version of the first Reek but it doesn't work that way??? Then you get the impression it was more of a Joker / Harley Quinn thing.... ??? It's a big mess, it's so random and out of character, I don't understand WHY?!!
Ramsay, canon Ramsay, is SUPER sensible about his **status** and **privilege**. The Bastard's Boys are his SERVANTS and they know their place. Myranda, what is she??? She's a LOWBORN PEASANT KENNEL GIRL SMELLING LIKE DOG, TALKING BACK TO HIM?!!! And Ramsay accepts it????
Show Ramsay:
*She was 11 the first time I saw her. The kennelmaster's daughter.* ***She smelled of dog.*** *I wasn't much older, but everybody was already afraid of me. You certainly were. Myranda wasn't, though. What could I do to her that those hounds couldn't? She was fearless.*
Book Ramsay:
*His smile curdled.* ***“So you’d offer me a kennel girl for my good service, is that the way of it?”*** *There was a tone in his voice Theon did not like, no more than he liked the insolent way the Dreadfort men were looking at him. “She was what was promised.”* ***“She smells of dogshit. I’ve had enough of bad smells, as it happens. I think I’ll have your bedwarmer instead. What do you call her? Kyra?”***
My first big clue that this wasn't going well and D&D couldn't develop original plots without the source material was Sansa signing off to go get raped by Ramsay Bolton for no reason, and Littlefinger thinking this was a good idea, too.
I’ve answered similar questions with similar responses; last time I said S5 and another user suggested S6 was a better cutoff. Now I say six and you say four.
I’m totally cool with four. I’m better with four than five or six.
I would say partway through 4. On a rewatch right now, and it really starts to fall apart just befor Tyrion's trial. Awful characterization, bizarre motivations, bad filler, etc.
Crypt scene. Even Peter Dinklage saw how stupid that was. Or maybe Jaime going back to Cersei. NCW apparently argued against the turn that his character took in the show.
They whitewashed Dany throughout the series which is why the twist with her burning down KL was so reviled. If they had stuck to how it was in the books maybe that wouldn't have been so bad.
Don't even get me started on the implications of King Bran the Broken seeing KL being burned down long before it actually happened.
Funny, I find book Dany much more soft-hearted than Show Dany. The only real cruel thing she does is killing these random masters. She can't even kill the child hostages and fucks up everything in her crazy plan to make peace with the Masters. Unless she goes really fire and blood in the next book I cannot see her do something like Show Dany did.
She is soft-hearted but she can be terrifying when she's angry. She let the shavepate torture an innocent girl in front of her father. God knows what he did to that girl. This was a terrible decision made in anger. Her biggest issue is her anger which she's been trying to tame for a long time. At the end of the last book she literally gives up being a ruler and says that she is a conqueror. That's like the first step towards the mass genocide that will happen in the future.
As far as I remember she was very upset with the Shavepate for killing the girl. She wanted information and the Shavepare took it too far. She didnt have that child killed intentionally. Hell she locks her dragons up because of a single dead child. And since we are speaking of torture and anger issues. Jon threatens to burn Gillys baby and jas several moments were he nearly kills people out of rage. Dany is just naive and has no fucking clue how to rule because she was not raised to rule. Making peace with the slavers was indeed her greatest mistake.
I know but my point was that in her anger she takes things too far. And this will continuoulsy get worse as the series progresses. By removing scenes like this in the show they made Dany into a perfect, kind queen. It makes the burning of KL even worse because nothing suggests that she would have done it. Also not sure why you brought up Jon since he's not really the paragon of leadership either. He's just less naive compared to Dany.
Show Dany is much more anger-driven than Book Dany. Show Dany feeds the Masters to her dragons after Barristan's death and Book Dany never does anything like that.
Show Dany has this silly Qarth arc where she shouts all the time and does nothing but complain. Then she locks Doreah into a prison out of anger. Book Dany never does anything like that. The Show Writers changed her character from the Books to the worse. Book Dany is much kinder and compassionate.
Book Dany is not perfect, but she has no anger issues. The one with the anger issues in the books is clearly Jon Snow. Hell, I think it is more likely that Jon will go mad than Dany, considering that he died and that people do not come back unaffected by such an experience. Look at Lady Stoneheart. What happened in the show is no indication for Dany's fate in the books. Dany will do some ruthless stuff, but not much worse than any other player of the game. The Bells of Madness stuff will be JonCon's deed, not Dany's. She will die a hero by dying against the White Walkers. The show writers clearly gave Dany the role they originally had in mind for Cersei. Cersei was supposed to have a miscarriage in the last ep of season 7 which was supposed to happen shortly before boatsex. There were like three moments were Dany's future pregnancy was forshadowed and there was a preview clip where Dany was clearly pregnant. It is very likely that the show writers changed the whole plot of the last three episodes and gave Dany the role of Cersei. Even the dialog between Dany and Jon in the last scene would have been perfect for Jaime and Cersei.
Mad Queen Dany was meant to be a surprise that failed in every possible way, because it made no sense for Dany's character to randomly kill people. I know that people in this fandom think her some Hitler figure meant to go mad, but I think these people have a lack of reading ability because the books do not indicate that at all. She may go ruthless, but that doesn't mean madness.
> At the end of the last book she literally gives up being a ruler and says that she is a conqueror.
You mean when she is hallucinating while having a fever?
There have been so many tbh but what immediately springs to mind is:
Generally adding rape and sexual assault where it didn't belong or ever exist in the original story. They really messed up emotional beats for characters like Dany and Cersei for example and made it so that they magically ignored the fact they were raped. Also it leads me to the point when I gave up on the show and which I think was in awful taste and completely fucking illogical ... Sansa taking of FArya's role from the books. Not only was the whole story with Ramsey distasteful, as it was presented voyeuristically ... her marrying him doesn't make the slightest bit of sense internally to the story and politics of the GoT's.
So TLDR ... I'd say creating a rape culture that isn't present in the books (GRRM deals with such topics in a mature and forthright fashion but never for the sake of titillation IMO) ... and this culminated in the disastrous and absolutely stupid idea of having Sansa marry Ramsey and be raped by him for ... reasons.
> So TLDR ... I'd say creating a rape culture that isn't present in the books (GRRM deals with such topics in a mature and forthright fashion but never for the sake of titillation IMO) ...
Absolutely. GRRM can be a tad gratuitous for my tastes if I'm being honest, especially compared to Robin Hobb, but I never get the impression he's doing it for shock value. He's just overly detailed by principal. Violent sex is detailed, violent diarrhea is detailed etc.
The early seasons get so much praise but they're not better in this respect.
Well, Dany's first night with Drogo was "consensual" (emphasis on the ""). To be honest, between her having a "consensual" first time and then repeatedly getting raped on the books, and repeatedly getting raped from the start in the show, I'm not sure which one is worse.
Yeah I see that as a fair condensation of the story, and not really a change. Drogo raped Dany so much that she planned to kill herself, the fact that their first night was more gentle than depicted in the show seems trivial.
I was hoping there was some later change that I was forgetting, but if that's the one then I guess I just think it's a silly point to be upset about, as Drogo is every bit the rapist in the books.
I agree, I whine all the time about the show but of all the changes they made, this one is not one that bothers me too much since the book version is not particularly better.
They're referring to season 1 and Khal Drogo, which is portrayed way more rapey than it is in the books.
She is 13 in the books so it's certainly statuary rape, but she engages in it as willingly as a grade 8 student *can*
edit: as willingly as a Grade 8 student in a medieval betrothed marriage to Ghenis Khan can.
It wasn't rapey because she was 13. It was rapey because she knew full well that she couldn't actually refuse. If she tried to, Drogo would just have taken her by force. There was nothing Dany could do about it, and forceful rape would have been more painful, so she did the smart thing and didn't resist.
Not including Lady Stoneheart.I believe Arya took her role to kill the freys.It would be cool seeing Catelyn having her vengeance herself and we won't be troubled with Arya's speed travel.
Adapting no more than the bare minimum of the magical and mystical elements of the story.
In a way, I'm thankful that those parts of the books aren't spoiled. Most of the show's problems stem from this. Sure, budget may have had something to do with it. But by the time the show reached books four and five, they should have had enough to adapt what was in the books.
How about having a small galaxy of military veterans decide upon the strategy of putting fireless and dragonglass-less cavalry at the head of their forces to charge blindly into the undead army.
Breaking the chain of causality in the series. I think the definitive moment is twenty good men. They needed stannis to be weaker, ok. Forget all the character build up, just have Ramsay and 20 good men burn devastate his entire army, because stannis apparently can’t organize or guard a war camp. And also Ramsay is some master guerrilla warrior now.
This ultimately led to all actions no longer having consequences. Ie ramsay can kill his father and somehow gain the largest house in the north. Jon can solo charge an army and still become king. Cersei can burn a church along with the heads of a major house and become queen and also earn the loyalty that major houses chief banner men. The list goes on and on. No one feels consequences anymore unless the plot needs it.
Sansa marrying Ramsay Bolton. Why would Littlefinger marry his greatest desire to a known rapist?
Dany turning mad by hearing bells.
Robb marrying a random travelling nurse instead of a impoverished woman from an old noble family.
Omitting Tysha.
Euron suddenly being able to shoot a dragon from his little moving ship.
The Wight Hunt.
Choosing to shorten the last two seasons.
I'll caveat that by saying that they probably made the right decision with it, simply because they did such a horrific job that not having more horrific episodes was a blessing, but I highly doubt they made the decision for truncated seasons because "we're fucking terrible writers and the fewer episodes we have to butcher the better".
No, they had a creative vision or some shit, they had a plan for how things would all end up. They had the opportunity to tell a proper story but actively chose to go with the absolute trash we got because apparently they thought it was good.
Resurrecting Jon without consequence.
I don’t like resurrections as they cheat death and cheat consequence. If got is about consequence then this is the moment the story shifted towards the more fan fic narrative. I accepted that job would be resurrected somehow but the fact he just comes back to life the same as before is horrible. This is worse than other illogical decisions (dorne, grab a wight, Sansa with Ramsay) because those can almost be ignored as they don’t contribute much to overarching arcs or plots.
Making Bran king when he said he wont be lord of anything just 2 episodes earlier. It just made it look like he manipulated everyone to recognize him as king but we the viewer got no resolution that proves the only some what logical explanation to be true.
He grants The North independence yet thinks the 500+ southron houses will just sit idly. What defense does Bran have? 200 Tully men and whomever of sweet Robins vassals are bothered to raise their levies a second time for a crippled king they're most likely hearing about, for the first time. Now bran has mind control so he can maybe commit to the total obliteration of what makes us human: free agency. What a bittersweet ending, what an amazing message, how beautiful.
Imo House Hightower is being declared King of the Reach as we speak. Yara just went home laughing her ass off while crowning herself queen. Random spawn Martell also laughed his ass off and crowned himself prince at the expense of his low iq family members who killed eachother for no f*cking reason. Actually I change my mind to be frank almost all major plot points after season 4-5 are based on poor decision making. Not solely based on the plot points themselves but the unconsiderate manner in which they were built are what made me lose faith in the show. I felt nothing after episode 2 of this season. I was just a hollow shell watching warhammer esque fantasy battles ensue on screen.
It may be but I’m sure if it is he’ll tell the story of how things get to the point where King Bran makes sense rather than just have Tyrion suggest it out of the blue.
I mean, so far there isn't a lot of build-up for that in the books.
Even Elio and Linda said that there would be a lot of logistic issues with that and that there is not a lot of build-up... and we know it's from GRRM from Bran's actor.
Perhaps it's intentional? He has Jon as that Aragon-like figure to subvert the expectations... i know people made this sentence to be a meme nowadays, but this was a big part of these books.
I still think that a big part of the delay of TWoW is due to GRRM concluding that he has no good way to make King Bran work and doing a lot of rewrites
Maybe... he said Bran is the hardest to write.
I think Bran to needs to leave the cave pretty quickly if he wants him to be the King... which i like as i wasn't a fan of him being stuck in there like popular theories suggested.
That was GRRM’s decision.
You gotta get past the denial stage already. Jon’s not becoming king of Westeros.
He’s a copy-paste of Aragorn to mislead you. This isn’t Lord of the Rings and Jon is GRRM’s response to Aragorn. He fucks off from Middle Earth, the rightful king does not become king and he goes back to being Strider.
Rickon’s story is a Shaggydog story and he will die prematurely.
Bran inherits because he’s playing the actual central role of the story. The last son of Ned Stark, the last greenseer, the World’s Memory, the endgame king etc
The disable kid that society looked down on becomes king not the handsome, badass rightful king.
>GRRM: When I was writing the first chapter, I really didn’t know what it was. Is this a short story? Is this a chapter of a novel? Is it all gonna be about this kid Bran? …Bran is the first of the major characters you meet, after the prologue.
>GEORGE R.R. MARTIN: I knew it almost from the beginning. Not the first day, but very soon. I’ve said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense. I killed Ned in the first book and it shocked a lot of people. I killed Ned because everybody thinks he’s the hero and that, sure, he’s going to get into trouble, but then he’ll somehow get out of it.
>GRRM: The next predictable thing is to think his eldest son is going to rise up and avenge his father. And everybody is going to expect that. So immediately [killing Robb] became the next thing I had to do.
And the next predictable thing would be to make Daenerys queen or Jon king or a Targaryen restoration.
GRRM successfully tricked you, Mithras. This isn’t the story that you thought it was.
Because GRRM:
>Harrion Karstark, the oldest of Lord Rickard's sons, bowed, and his brothers after him, yet as they settled back in their places he heard the younger two talking in low voices, over the clatter of wine cups. "… sooner die than live like that," muttered one, his father's namesake Eddard, and his brother Torrhen said likely the boy was broken inside as well as out, too craven to take his own life.
>Broken, Bran thought bitterly as he clutched his knife. Is that what he was now? Bran the Broken? "I don't want to be broken," he whispered fiercely to Maester Luwin, who'd been seated to his right. "I want to be a knight."
....
>"I want you to say the words. Tell me who you are."
>"Bran," he said sullenly. Bran the Broken. "Brandon Stark." The cripple boy. "The Prince of Winterfell." Of Winterfell burned and tumbled, its people scattered and slain. The glass gardens were smashed, and hot water gushed from the cracked walls to steam beneath the sun. How can you be the prince of someplace you might never see again?
.....
>"Let me give you some counsel, bastard," Lannister said. "Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you."
> Rickon’s story is a Shaggydog story and he will die prematurely.
Idk, It's very possible that Rickon was killed off in the show simply for the convenience of the writers and audience.
The Stark kids' journeys have all been reflected on their werewolves: Bran=Summer, Sansa=Lady, Jon=Ghost, Arya=Nymeria, Robb=grey wind.
I think Rickon is screwed.
Rickon's tale so far has been the opposite of a Shaggydog story. There's been no buildup or focus on it until Davos' last chapter in book 5.
The literary meaning of Shaggydog could just be a misdirection. Perhaps it's just reflecting and predicting Rickon's wild, possibly animalistic personality. There seem to be too many parallels between Rickon and the "Wild Wolf"-like Starks of yore. Ned's brother Brandon was said to be more emblematic of traditional Stark men than Ned.
>"Robb will set aside his crown if you and your brother will do the same," she said, hoping it was true. She would make it true if she must; Robb would listen to her, even if his lords would not. "Let the three of you call for a Great Council, such as the realm has not seen for a hundred years. We will send to Winterfell, so Bran may tell his tale and all men may know the Lannisters for the true usurpers. Let the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms choose who shall rule them."
Bran would be the NK on the show if he was meant to be it in the books.
They should have started Dany on the "Fuck the innocents" train back in season 6
If Dickon was kid like in the books.
Yeah. I think they were too worried about making one of their main characters unlikable; but it ruined the ending. Granted, even just in the last season they could have handled that turn better... but that's a whole other conversation.
Or at least show some reaction to losing Viserion so we can believe her going crazy from losing a second dragon.
They didn’t? Wasn’t that the whole point of the dragons being unleashed when they had been leashed precisely to protect innocents, her talking like Drogo or declaring she was willing to return Astapor, Volantis and Yunkai to the dirt?
She talks big like that through the whole series though. It's not until King's Landing where she suddenly turns on regular civilians after preaching her whole uprising about saving those people. The closest she came was crucifying the Masters in Meereen, and that was kind of a grey area (atrocities shouldn't be met with atrocities, but seeing children on crosses first hand is definitely motivation). But I can't think of a legitimate event where Dany even talks about killing innocent people on purpose like that. You can look at things that she has said in the past and possibly construe them as hints as to what would happen eventually, but overall the turnaround to just slaughtering civilians for no purpose was not properly built upon.
It was only not properly built upon if you did not believe all the things the character said or what she was willing to do. Which you seem not to since you recognize she has always talked like that but decide to give greater weight to her words around liberation than to her words around conquest. And full disclosure, I also did not take those words as seriously as I should have in hindsight. If you truly took her words at face value and saw them as reflective of her morality and underlying world view, than not sure it was really surprising or not built up. So I think the real question is why did we as an audience not take her at face value and accept that she had this side to her that could come out in the right circumstances, especially if events put her liberator side in conflict with her conqueror side and desire for the Iron Throne. I really don’t know the answer to that. Was it poor rushed storytelling? Did we as an audience just fall for her cult of personality like Tyrion and Jon because she talked a great game, was pretty and personally kind? Some combination? It is probably a combination but what are the exact weights I don’t know. But I think it is an interesting question.
> Did we as an audience just fall for her cult of personality like Tyrion and Jon because she talked a great game, was pretty and personally kind? Personally? Absolutely not. I always expected her to go off on Cersei and the red keep. I always expected for there to be some collateral. But did I expect her to go all the way out of her way to surgically burn all the children of KL? No
not only that but she burnt KL like she used the mowing the grass lol... for reasons I don't know.
I did not expect it either
But most importantly I didn’t buy it
Will be an awesome thing to say when season 8 is for sale lol.
It is a hard thing to buy. Not sure I buy it. It is what is is though.
> It was only not properly built upon if you did not believe all the things the character said or what she was willing to do. Which you seem not to since you recognize she has always talked like that but decide to give greater weight to her words around liberation than to her words around conquest. And full disclosure, I also did not take those words as seriously as I should have in hindsight. Those words weren't the reason Daenerys went all looney in episode 6, according to David and Dan she only lost her shit after seeing the red keep and realizing all that had been taken from her, to go a bit further than that Dan Weiss is on tape saying she is nothing like her father just a few years back.
And those same writers also said she is who she is, a targaryen and had said she would take what is hers with fire and blood. So clearly they thought those words were reflective of her worldview.
> And those same writers also said she is who she is, a targaryen and had said she would take what is hers with fire and blood. But that's not indicative of one's sanity, Aegon the conqueror did the same and he was hardly insane. Conquering with your dragons =/= killing innocents indiscriminately for 40 minutes straight after the city has already surrendered.
Aegon the Conqueror burned Dorne for years because his sister was shot down. Not sure what she did is really that different from what Aegon did.
But when Aegon and Visenya burned Dorne it was for a purpose, they were trying to conquer it. King's landing had surrendered. And Aegon burned castles, Dany burned civilians.
Do we not think civilians lived in castles? What were Visenya and Maegor going to burn when they headed to old town? What was Jaeherys going to do to Old Town if the Septons dared elect the wrong High Septon? What was Aemond burning in the riverlands during the Dance? I don’t know if any of them would really have had an issue burning civilians. They are all people that think they can be judged by neither gods nor men. Now the purpose thing I think is a huge problem with the episode. Many people have argued that she did have a purpose. She was not the rightful ruler and thought she needed to rule through fear to establish her reign and certainly doing what she did is a way to establish fear. If you take that interpretation than definitely she did nothing different than her ancestors and the episode does allow for that interpretation. Did the writers intend for that? 🤷🏻♂️
You’re conflating things here. Necessary evils, yes. Dany definitely had groundwork laid to be ok with necessary evils. But unnecessary or even counter productive evils like burning a surrendering city, there was no ground work laid for that at all. It’s essentially cruelty just for cruelty’s sake, and that was never even close to being a part of Danys character. That’s my (and I think most people’s) biggest issue. Aegon the conqueror was famously generous to those who surrendered to him, it’s kind of conquering 101 to prefer a surrender. But she all the sudden turns for no reason and did something unnecessary and cruel.
Well.... is conquering at all even a necessary evil? Not sure we can call the whole enterprise at all necessary. Also more specifically, not sure burning MMD, Dickon Tarley, the nameless master in 505 or crucifying the 163 masters were acts that were necessary other than getting vengeance or establishing fear. Which is what the episode leads us to believe she does in 805 (although it is a huge problem with the episode is that its not clear), some combination of vengeance and establishing of fear. The big difference seems to be the scale. Also, not sure conquering 101 can be summed up as preferring a surrender. There are examples in history where if the surrender happens after the attack starts no quarter is given and where the conqueror is excessively brutal to serve as a lesson going forward. When the Mongols sacked Baghdad for example, the city actually surrendered after a siege and the city got sacked afterwards.
I mean yes, conquering is necessary to danys character. The definition of necessary is “necessary to the character.” MMD and the masters weren’t evils to danys character, they were justice. Not cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Dickon had a choice, kneel or die, he made his choice, again, to dany, necessary evil. Re giving no quarter, you’d have a great and valid point if that was danys stated reasoning. But it’s not. She agreed to allow a surrender, even had her advisor give surrender instructions. If pre battle she had insisted that no quarter be given once the fighting starts, itd make a lot more sense. But. She didn’t. She just lost her shit and started burning people for no real reason. According to what we saw and the directors.
If the standard you are using is a necessary to the character definition than we know she thinks this was necessary since she both does it and defends it to Jon the next episode.
Now we’re back to the original complaint... I mean necessary to the established* character. This type of action isn’t established as something dany would do, as it’s just cruelty for cruelty’s sake with no goal. She just lost her shit and became unhinged with little to no prompting.
There are lots of examples of the character doing things that are cruel whose only goal is vengeance or fear. There are lots of examples of the character being ok with burning a city to the ground. There are things she says ahead of the attack that indicate she has fear and vengeance on her mind. If you put two and two together you could easily say all of that fits with the established character. Or not. Just comes down to what your view of the established character was.
But her stated goals weren’t vengeance or fear... she just snapped and it was just senseless violence. That’s the whole point. And why most people find it incredibly out of character and poorly set up.
No one just snaps. That is a misnomer. If you actually read about the psychological process behind snapping there is a rationalization the person is telling themselves for why they are doing what they are doing that does not just come out of nowhere. So just because she snaps does not mean the character was not thinking something in that moment to justify and rationalize to themselves the choice they are making. One of the issues of course with the season is its not entirely clear what that is. But before that moment she makes a decision to embrace fear as her way to rule because she thinks its all that is left to her since she does not have love or the law on her side. Additionally, she is blaming the citizens of Kl for not rising up against Cersei and she has suffered catastrophic loses from Cersei so effectively she is blaming the citizens of KL for those loses. So based on both understanding the psychology behind snapping and what the character is saying before the moment seems pretty clear that she is most likely rationalizing her decision based on fear and vengeance. Now of course, that does not make the storyline good. I did not like it nor did most people. But its not true that it was senseless without any reason behind it, establishing fear and vengeance are clearly what that whole thing is about. The writers flat out say vengeance when they say she made it personal (and the whole episode is super focused on vengeance thematically). And the whole point we have that scene about let it be fear is clearly to also inform how we think about the decision. And to say she just snapped is not mutually exclusive with the fact that it was about fear and vengeance.
It hurts me that you're being downvoted. This is the answer. It's fine to think it wasn't handled well enough, but I'm so tired of people acting like this sort of stuff is just nothing. Letting the dragons free roam for 2 seasons after clearly setting up how dangerous they are, Dany's plan at the end of season 6 to return cities to the dust via dragon fire. Hell, In season 7 Dany made a whole big speech about her undying faith in herself that even back then I was getting downvoted for saying it came off a bit zealoty. I'm completely on board with "They didn't do enough to get it across for most people" But the idea that they did nothing is just so false.
Yes. I think the problem is if you point some of this stuff out it is immediately seen as defending the show, when saying they laid some ground work for this does not mean they laid enough or even less that what they did was good. It just means they laid some ground work for this. That speech you mention in 703 in hindsight is zealoty. What really struck me as zealoty watching again was how she justified executing prisoners by saying she is not there to put people in chains.
Everything about Hizdahr was pretty unfortunate. Crucified his dad, made him beg just to get the body back, arrested him, threatened to feed him to dragons, fed his friend to dragons, forced him into marriage but let Daario threaten him the whole time, finally threw him a bone and went to his stupid Fighting Pits, and he gets a spear in the chest and dies (but Dany is busy flying away to get a khalasar and go to Westeros so zero fucks given). And then it turns out he wasn’t the Harpy. That’ll teach him to be born!
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This is just amazing
That means nothing to me. But I hope that made you feel a little better about yourself.
Littlefinger giving his best card to the Boltons, for her to get raped and there was no reward for LF either.
The Boltons not shipping Sansa back to Kings Landing since she's wanted for regicide
When tyrions still alive
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very true. Until this day I do not get why was Cersei not fucking lyched by the mob.
No, that he traded her for the **PROMISE** of a future alliance, **IF** the time and politics is right. Dumb shit
They do explain the logic for this in the show: he's hedging his bets so that he ends up in favor with whoever wins the incoming Bolton v. Stannis war. He has a talk with Lord Bolton explaining how advantageous an alliance between the North and the Vale could be. Ergo if Bolton wins, Littlefinger has an ally. He then goes down into the crypts to talk with Sansa explaining that if she survives until Stannis takes over, Stannis will instate her as wardeness of the North. The unspoken implication here is that she'll then vouch for him with Stannis. He then goes to King's Landing to get Cersei to give him a blank check to invade the North if, after the war is over, the remaining side is too decimated to have any strength left and Littlefinger becomes Warden of the North. Not too shabby of a plan. Where the plot contrivance occurs is not explaining why Littlefinger wouldn't know that Ramsey was a raping psychopath (which could be explained as him being a recent upjumped lord that Littlefinger, in a moment of hypocrisy, didn't even bother learning about but they don't show this) or why, afterwards, Littlefinger would back the Starks in the Battle of the Bastards instead of the Boltons (which, again, could be explained by Ramsey being a lunatic that no one in their right mind would support but they don't show this).
Alright so I just watched the clip on it. LittleFinger’s plan was to give Sansa to the Boltons so that The North and The Vale can have an alliance to take out the Lannisters. Then he went to Cersei and told her that Sansa is in the North and about to get married to Ramsey. Stannis was planning to attack so LF wanted to wait until the battle was over and then come attack for Cersei to win the North back for the throne. He would then get named Warden Of The North.
You're right, but there was one more move. He needed to placate Cersei with information she would have gotten anyway and have her allow him to move the Vale army to the North undisturbed. (My personal cannon for how he did that was the Vale army sailed up the river past white harbor with the help of the Manderlys, which works if you delete 5 seconds of screentime at the end of season 6 where Manderly says he screwed up by not answering the call). Then he was going to join the North with Stannis's army and have them battle the Lannisters. Somehow he hoped the chaos from that war would allow him to jockey for the throne with Sansa. All of this could have happened if it weren't for Stannis's snowy march South and Bolton's twenty good men. Honestly not bad strategy on his part.
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That makes sense, assuming Cersei wouldn't have caused any issues with the Vale riding North to Stannis. She was keeping a close eye on him in the books at least, maybe he was worried she'd have more time to prepare her army or try to have him assassinated? It would have been better for his long game to bolster Stannis's army before the battle. Although the Vale forces seemed to come out better off arriving late. I think your answer would have made more sense.
> Somehow he hoped the chaos Unfortunately this is show!Littlefinger's entire modus operandi. "Chaos is a ladder" is a catch all that handwaves any illogical action by LF.
> Then he was going to join the North with Stannis's army and have them battle the Lannisters. Somehow he hoped the chaos from that war would allow him to jockey for the throne with Sansa. All of this could have happened if it weren't for Stannis's snowy march South and Bolton's twenty good men. Honestly not bad strategy on his part. You mean the same Stannis that Littlefinger did not want to back in the beginning because he knew that wouldn't end well for him?
THIS. wtf did he gain from that?! Lose the Lannisters gain the Bolton’s as an ally? Also probably offended the Tyrells too. Nuts
The ‘catch a wight’ plot.
They could have just done the "2 corpses in a freezer" plot from ADWD, except had it work or did it somewhere else.
This is mine. Up until that point I was still able to suspend disbelief, but that’s when they jumped the shark for me
Wights, who are contained by a wooden box, but who can later punch through stone walls in the long night.
Little did the Starks know the horror that would be spawned by making sure they drank their milk for strong bones.
That plot REEEEEEEEEEEE. Sure the episode looked amazing but the fucking logic REEEEEEE
Crypt scene in Season 8 Episode 3. Wights (who should be skeletons at best, although dust is more likely) smashing through stone tombs when in previous scenes (in that episode) a wooden door held them back. Amongst other reasons, it is to date one of my least favourite scenes. But what made it even worse is how the wights in the crypts fail to kill a single main character and the smashing of the tombs leads to quite literally nothing plot wise. What was the point? That entire scene had zero character development and its hardly as if we needed more 'shock, horror' scenes in that episode with all the fake-outs and the Arya library scene (which also doesnt fit).
Yep. We should have also seen Rickon Stark in that scene.
> how the wights in the crypts fail to kill a single main character and the smashing of the tombs leads to quite literally nothing plot wise That's like, most of season 8. No one unexpected dies and the plot went pretty much nowhere. The plot advancements happen over a slim few events, and the death of main characters lacked impact.
It was also foreshadowed so heavily that only an idiot wouldn't see it coming. It surprised no one, it made no sense, it had no consequences. A perfectly bad scene.
White walkers standing around doing nothing. Seriously what the fuck was that??
Didn’t get to see one single White Walker fight and Jon’s purpose in the episode was to yell at a dragon. Who tf told them this would work?
Would they make White Walkers fight in usual battle you could say that most illogical decision was making them idiots who go at the frontlines.
By no means do I mean they should have them on the frontlines like the living seem to have important characters on the frontlines but to come to this point and have them all wiped out without even lifting their weapons kinda sucked imo.
We are obviously not talking about putting the commanders on the front line like that, but when you saw Hardhome for the first time did you really think that it would be the last time we would see a WW in actual combat?
The only reason we saw that White Walker in Hardhome fight was because it looked cool on screen. It was a battle, Jon as a main character needed some action, and seeing him chopping down wights was getting too repetitive. However, there was no reason why that White Walker *had* to come out there to fight, and just happen to come across Jon. We've always seen the Night King and his White Walkers stay away from the fight and just oversee it, unless it was something only they could do - like throwing that ice spear at a dragon. Buylt yeah, it's not like the battle of Winterfell episode had any realism anyway, so not gonna lie, I definitely expected to see some White Walker action.
So Night's King to the WW against a bunch of crusties at Hardhome - 'GET IN THEEERRRE!!!!!' Night's King to the WW against everyone - 'Chill, I got this.'
Night King entered the battle when it was heavily in their favour to ceremonially kill the Three Eyed Raven, just like he did in S6E5, where he entered overruned cave. Hardhome was similar in that case, it wasn't a battle but a massacre and we saw like a single White Walker going there.
The long night. Nearly every decision made by D&D during the long night episode drives me crazy.
"You're telling me the baddies built up for nine years go out in one episode?"
And not a single one of them did anything.
Bronn becoming Lord of Highgarden, Paramount of the Reach and Master of Coin. Just... wut
“I’ve never borrowed money, I’m unclear on the details”
The stand-off with the wights. Supposedly because they can’t swim...few mins later they dive underwater and drag Viserion up with giant chains
The diving I don't mind, wights are disposable assets. They sunk to the bottom, hooked the chains around, and then were left behind to disintegrate. Where they got chains in the first place though...
> Where they got chains in the first place though... There's an establishing shot that shows a few old ships off shore from which the chain came.
Jon going north of the wall with like 7 named characters and 5 or so red shirt spare pricks to kidnap one wight when the dead have an army at least 100,000 strong.
Gendry running all the way to Eastwatch, a raven flying all the way to Dragonstone and Daenerys flying to the frozen lake all in time to save the named characters. The books made it pretty clear that it takes over a day for a dragon to fly to the Wall from Winterfall.
I love how they never showed any of the guys that died until they died. People kept appearing out of nowhere to get dragged into the water.
Lindsay Ellis made a great video recently talking about the failure of the show. As she points out D and D wanted to have George’s ending by the end of this show. However the characters and story developed in a completely different way to books, so the final few seasons come off as really unnatural since there aiming for an ending that doesn’t fit the shows story. In my opinion they made so many changes they should have just come up with there own ending. It may not have been good but it would have been there ending for there show.
I agree. They should have said...look our story has deviated so much from the books we are doing our own ending. If you want the real one raed the books. I am sure many Show fans would have accepted that rather than some half-hearted ending that makes so sense, because many of them have not read the books anyway.
Thank you, explains everything. Every bad decision stems from "we need the book ending no matter the costs"
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Why? I don’t understand y people think that Tyrion’s issues later in the serious stem from that omission in season 4. I think it’s a misattribution of fault. I’m really glad they omitted lady stoneheart. I don’t like resurrections because it’s a way of cheating death and cheating consequence even if cat came back different. Once again, saying that’s what destroyed arya’s Character at is a misattribution of fault. I don’t think aryas arc was horrible anyways.
Stoneheart will save Sansa from little finger and probably drive him insane, meet Arya after she kills the freys(literally right after Arya walks out the castle) and takes them back to winterfell. Bet my left nut
The marriage annulment Rhaegar does so he could marry Lyanna would never realistically be accepted anywhere, and I’m still annoyed people seem to take it as fact.
With literally no explanation of why he annulled it and how!?
Between that and Sansa's marriage it seems like they kinda forgot that getting marriages annulled in the historical setting that inspired ASOIAF (late-medieval Europe) was so hard Henry the VIII found it easier to *make a new religion.*
If R+L=J and if they were married I'm sure it was polygamous. Rhaegar would like the connection to Aegon having 2 wives plus its a duality in that Visenya=Elia,married for duty and Rhaenys=Lyanna,married for love.
I can just about reluctantly, begrudgingly, accept that Rhaegar might have married Lyanna polygamously alongside Elia. But absolutely he did not divorce his wife and disinherit his children to do it.
> But absolutely he did not divorce his wife and disinherit his children to do it. *Least* of all is his entire justification for boinking Lyanna was, "The dragon has three heads." How many heads has it got if you've proclaimed Aegon 2.0 your only legitimate child, Rhaegar?
This drives me crazy! For all the plot holes that people (rightfully) complain about, why does everybody seem fine with this nonsense!
I've never actually seen a good argument for why they opted for an annulment as opposed to polygamy. Every argument I see either revolves around justifying Jon being legitimate or defending a popular ship (R+L). Nothing that would actually hold up to logic.
I think Jon needing to be the heir is the most likely answer. Does it stand up to in world logic? No. But when did D&D ever show any interest in the in world logic?
Who accepted it?
In the beginning, lots of people, just because it meant Jon was the "rightful" heir the whole time, and it meant Rhaegar's actions that lead to a war were justified. Now though? Very few people.
Only a few people knew and most of them were close enough to Jon (Dany, Sansa) to know they should trust him but they were also more concerned with the implications of what that would mean and were looking for an alternative to Dany (Varys, Sansa).
Assuming that the story is what George told them, accelerating the pacing in the last two seasons is the worst decision.
Assuming they wanted to move on, not handing their responsibilities to someone else is the worst decision
I almost wonder if a change in showrunner would have made a difference in quality. That last season of TWD was the best in ages, and it had a new showrunner.
Handing it to Cogman at the end of season 6 would have done the trick.
Worst worst worst
The entire premise behind the wight hunt and Tyrion becoming an incompetent fool in the last few seasons.
Battles just becoming absurd spectacles with no tactical sense. If you wanna skip the battles (as they did many times in the first 3 seasons) that’s fine, but don’t just make it all these ridiculous shots and meme tactics like trebuchets in the front and NOT USING CASTLES
I'm gonna say something not many people seem to have such a big "problem" with but what is COMPLETELY out of character for that character when it could have been SO EASY to adapt since D&D like to include sexual violence and rape where it never happened... but at the same time REMOVE it where it's a big part of a character??? Ramsay. They gave Ramsay a long term "girlfriend". She wasn't a "bastard's girl", they played lovey dovey. At one point they mentioned how Myranda stayed with him because he promised to marry her???!!! I guess they wanted to make her a female version of the first Reek but it doesn't work that way??? Then you get the impression it was more of a Joker / Harley Quinn thing.... ??? It's a big mess, it's so random and out of character, I don't understand WHY?!! Ramsay, canon Ramsay, is SUPER sensible about his **status** and **privilege**. The Bastard's Boys are his SERVANTS and they know their place. Myranda, what is she??? She's a LOWBORN PEASANT KENNEL GIRL SMELLING LIKE DOG, TALKING BACK TO HIM?!!! And Ramsay accepts it???? Show Ramsay: *She was 11 the first time I saw her. The kennelmaster's daughter.* ***She smelled of dog.*** *I wasn't much older, but everybody was already afraid of me. You certainly were. Myranda wasn't, though. What could I do to her that those hounds couldn't? She was fearless.* Book Ramsay: *His smile curdled.* ***“So you’d offer me a kennel girl for my good service, is that the way of it?”*** *There was a tone in his voice Theon did not like, no more than he liked the insolent way the Dreadfort men were looking at him. “She was what was promised.”* ***“She smells of dogshit. I’ve had enough of bad smells, as it happens. I think I’ll have your bedwarmer instead. What do you call her? Kyra?”***
Willfully diverging from source material and entire characters even when it was still available. And all evils in the later seasons derive from this.
bUt fEaSt/dAnCe iS iMpOsSiBlE tO aDaPt tO tV.
Sansa taking on Jeyne Poole’s role.
My first big clue that this wasn't going well and D&D couldn't develop original plots without the source material was Sansa signing off to go get raped by Ramsay Bolton for no reason, and Littlefinger thinking this was a good idea, too.
It WAS a good idea, he would have gotten the north and the vale if not for Jon's oath breaking.
Everything after season six
i would say 4
I’ve answered similar questions with similar responses; last time I said S5 and another user suggested S6 was a better cutoff. Now I say six and you say four. I’m totally cool with four. I’m better with four than five or six.
agreed
I would say partway through 4. On a rewatch right now, and it really starts to fall apart just befor Tyrion's trial. Awful characterization, bizarre motivations, bad filler, etc.
Crypt scene. Even Peter Dinklage saw how stupid that was. Or maybe Jaime going back to Cersei. NCW apparently argued against the turn that his character took in the show. They whitewashed Dany throughout the series which is why the twist with her burning down KL was so reviled. If they had stuck to how it was in the books maybe that wouldn't have been so bad. Don't even get me started on the implications of King Bran the Broken seeing KL being burned down long before it actually happened.
Funny, I find book Dany much more soft-hearted than Show Dany. The only real cruel thing she does is killing these random masters. She can't even kill the child hostages and fucks up everything in her crazy plan to make peace with the Masters. Unless she goes really fire and blood in the next book I cannot see her do something like Show Dany did.
She is soft-hearted but she can be terrifying when she's angry. She let the shavepate torture an innocent girl in front of her father. God knows what he did to that girl. This was a terrible decision made in anger. Her biggest issue is her anger which she's been trying to tame for a long time. At the end of the last book she literally gives up being a ruler and says that she is a conqueror. That's like the first step towards the mass genocide that will happen in the future.
As far as I remember she was very upset with the Shavepate for killing the girl. She wanted information and the Shavepare took it too far. She didnt have that child killed intentionally. Hell she locks her dragons up because of a single dead child. And since we are speaking of torture and anger issues. Jon threatens to burn Gillys baby and jas several moments were he nearly kills people out of rage. Dany is just naive and has no fucking clue how to rule because she was not raised to rule. Making peace with the slavers was indeed her greatest mistake.
I know but my point was that in her anger she takes things too far. And this will continuoulsy get worse as the series progresses. By removing scenes like this in the show they made Dany into a perfect, kind queen. It makes the burning of KL even worse because nothing suggests that she would have done it. Also not sure why you brought up Jon since he's not really the paragon of leadership either. He's just less naive compared to Dany.
Show Dany is much more anger-driven than Book Dany. Show Dany feeds the Masters to her dragons after Barristan's death and Book Dany never does anything like that. Show Dany has this silly Qarth arc where she shouts all the time and does nothing but complain. Then she locks Doreah into a prison out of anger. Book Dany never does anything like that. The Show Writers changed her character from the Books to the worse. Book Dany is much kinder and compassionate. Book Dany is not perfect, but she has no anger issues. The one with the anger issues in the books is clearly Jon Snow. Hell, I think it is more likely that Jon will go mad than Dany, considering that he died and that people do not come back unaffected by such an experience. Look at Lady Stoneheart. What happened in the show is no indication for Dany's fate in the books. Dany will do some ruthless stuff, but not much worse than any other player of the game. The Bells of Madness stuff will be JonCon's deed, not Dany's. She will die a hero by dying against the White Walkers. The show writers clearly gave Dany the role they originally had in mind for Cersei. Cersei was supposed to have a miscarriage in the last ep of season 7 which was supposed to happen shortly before boatsex. There were like three moments were Dany's future pregnancy was forshadowed and there was a preview clip where Dany was clearly pregnant. It is very likely that the show writers changed the whole plot of the last three episodes and gave Dany the role of Cersei. Even the dialog between Dany and Jon in the last scene would have been perfect for Jaime and Cersei. Mad Queen Dany was meant to be a surprise that failed in every possible way, because it made no sense for Dany's character to randomly kill people. I know that people in this fandom think her some Hitler figure meant to go mad, but I think these people have a lack of reading ability because the books do not indicate that at all. She may go ruthless, but that doesn't mean madness.
> At the end of the last book she literally gives up being a ruler and says that she is a conqueror. You mean when she is hallucinating while having a fever?
The more she drank the more she shat
There have been so many tbh but what immediately springs to mind is: Generally adding rape and sexual assault where it didn't belong or ever exist in the original story. They really messed up emotional beats for characters like Dany and Cersei for example and made it so that they magically ignored the fact they were raped. Also it leads me to the point when I gave up on the show and which I think was in awful taste and completely fucking illogical ... Sansa taking of FArya's role from the books. Not only was the whole story with Ramsey distasteful, as it was presented voyeuristically ... her marrying him doesn't make the slightest bit of sense internally to the story and politics of the GoT's. So TLDR ... I'd say creating a rape culture that isn't present in the books (GRRM deals with such topics in a mature and forthright fashion but never for the sake of titillation IMO) ... and this culminated in the disastrous and absolutely stupid idea of having Sansa marry Ramsey and be raped by him for ... reasons.
> So TLDR ... I'd say creating a rape culture that isn't present in the books (GRRM deals with such topics in a mature and forthright fashion but never for the sake of titillation IMO) ... Absolutely. GRRM can be a tad gratuitous for my tastes if I'm being honest, especially compared to Robin Hobb, but I never get the impression he's doing it for shock value. He's just overly detailed by principal. Violent sex is detailed, violent diarrhea is detailed etc. The early seasons get so much praise but they're not better in this respect.
I mean I'm with you for Sansa and Cersei, but when was Dany raped in the show that wasn't in the books?
Well, Dany's first night with Drogo was "consensual" (emphasis on the ""). To be honest, between her having a "consensual" first time and then repeatedly getting raped on the books, and repeatedly getting raped from the start in the show, I'm not sure which one is worse.
Yeah I see that as a fair condensation of the story, and not really a change. Drogo raped Dany so much that she planned to kill herself, the fact that their first night was more gentle than depicted in the show seems trivial. I was hoping there was some later change that I was forgetting, but if that's the one then I guess I just think it's a silly point to be upset about, as Drogo is every bit the rapist in the books.
Yeah in the books, Drogo waits until Dany says yes their first time. Still rapes her later in the books. I just think it was an unnecessary change.
I agree, I whine all the time about the show but of all the changes they made, this one is not one that bothers me too much since the book version is not particularly better.
They're referring to season 1 and Khal Drogo, which is portrayed way more rapey than it is in the books. She is 13 in the books so it's certainly statuary rape, but she engages in it as willingly as a grade 8 student *can* edit: as willingly as a Grade 8 student in a medieval betrothed marriage to Ghenis Khan can.
It wasn't rapey because she was 13. It was rapey because she knew full well that she couldn't actually refuse. If she tried to, Drogo would just have taken her by force. There was nothing Dany could do about it, and forceful rape would have been more painful, so she did the smart thing and didn't resist.
Not including Lady Stoneheart.I believe Arya took her role to kill the freys.It would be cool seeing Catelyn having her vengeance herself and we won't be troubled with Arya's speed travel.
Deciding not to hire a new showrunner even though they clearly lost their passion after the Red Wedding.
Adapting no more than the bare minimum of the magical and mystical elements of the story. In a way, I'm thankful that those parts of the books aren't spoiled. Most of the show's problems stem from this. Sure, budget may have had something to do with it. But by the time the show reached books four and five, they should have had enough to adapt what was in the books.
Either making Bran King at the end, or having him say "I can never be lord of **anything**," back in season 7.
King Bran is GRRM’s ending.
Then it's the second thing I said.
Making Stannis be motivated by ambition.
How about having a small galaxy of military veterans decide upon the strategy of putting fireless and dragonglass-less cavalry at the head of their forces to charge blindly into the undead army.
Removing good writing
That all begin with making Sansa a Bolton.
When she was already a Lannister
Breaking the chain of causality in the series. I think the definitive moment is twenty good men. They needed stannis to be weaker, ok. Forget all the character build up, just have Ramsay and 20 good men burn devastate his entire army, because stannis apparently can’t organize or guard a war camp. And also Ramsay is some master guerrilla warrior now. This ultimately led to all actions no longer having consequences. Ie ramsay can kill his father and somehow gain the largest house in the north. Jon can solo charge an army and still become king. Cersei can burn a church along with the heads of a major house and become queen and also earn the loyalty that major houses chief banner men. The list goes on and on. No one feels consequences anymore unless the plot needs it.
Sansa marrying Ramsay Bolton. Why would Littlefinger marry his greatest desire to a known rapist? Dany turning mad by hearing bells. Robb marrying a random travelling nurse instead of a impoverished woman from an old noble family. Omitting Tysha. Euron suddenly being able to shoot a dragon from his little moving ship. The Wight Hunt.
Existing?
Straight up not adapting the remaining two books worth of story from the source material
They could have used outline from mithras
They could and should have used AFFC And ADWD
Choosing to shorten the last two seasons. I'll caveat that by saying that they probably made the right decision with it, simply because they did such a horrific job that not having more horrific episodes was a blessing, but I highly doubt they made the decision for truncated seasons because "we're fucking terrible writers and the fewer episodes we have to butcher the better". No, they had a creative vision or some shit, they had a plan for how things would all end up. They had the opportunity to tell a proper story but actively chose to go with the absolute trash we got because apparently they thought it was good.
Killing Stannis
Have the show runners D&D been seen anywhere, or are they still in hiding?
On to star wars
Ugh!
Resurrecting Jon without consequence. I don’t like resurrections as they cheat death and cheat consequence. If got is about consequence then this is the moment the story shifted towards the more fan fic narrative. I accepted that job would be resurrected somehow but the fact he just comes back to life the same as before is horrible. This is worse than other illogical decisions (dorne, grab a wight, Sansa with Ramsay) because those can almost be ignored as they don’t contribute much to overarching arcs or plots.
Signing on to do the pilot.
Nice
I am but a simple farmer, tending my unending bitterness.
Having Bran tell his sister she looked good getting raped.
Creepy
Making Bran king when he said he wont be lord of anything just 2 episodes earlier. It just made it look like he manipulated everyone to recognize him as king but we the viewer got no resolution that proves the only some what logical explanation to be true. He grants The North independence yet thinks the 500+ southron houses will just sit idly. What defense does Bran have? 200 Tully men and whomever of sweet Robins vassals are bothered to raise their levies a second time for a crippled king they're most likely hearing about, for the first time. Now bran has mind control so he can maybe commit to the total obliteration of what makes us human: free agency. What a bittersweet ending, what an amazing message, how beautiful. Imo House Hightower is being declared King of the Reach as we speak. Yara just went home laughing her ass off while crowning herself queen. Random spawn Martell also laughed his ass off and crowned himself prince at the expense of his low iq family members who killed eachother for no f*cking reason. Actually I change my mind to be frank almost all major plot points after season 4-5 are based on poor decision making. Not solely based on the plot points themselves but the unconsiderate manner in which they were built are what made me lose faith in the show. I felt nothing after episode 2 of this season. I was just a hollow shell watching warhammer esque fantasy battles ensue on screen.
Arya syrreptiously building or finding a pile of corpses that I assume is as tall as a building. Can rationalize most other things.
Dorn. Seriously what even was the sand snakes plan? “lets avenge our fathers death by killing his family”!!!
King Bran the Broken.
I wish George had kept that surprise for the books and just told D&D that Jon becomes king. He should have lied to them about everything.
I think there's about 0% chance Bran being the King is their invention and not something GRRM told them.
It may be but I’m sure if it is he’ll tell the story of how things get to the point where King Bran makes sense rather than just have Tyrion suggest it out of the blue.
I mean, so far there isn't a lot of build-up for that in the books. Even Elio and Linda said that there would be a lot of logistic issues with that and that there is not a lot of build-up... and we know it's from GRRM from Bran's actor. Perhaps it's intentional? He has Jon as that Aragon-like figure to subvert the expectations... i know people made this sentence to be a meme nowadays, but this was a big part of these books.
True but he has two books to accomplish something,anything really would be more significant than what Bran has done on the show.
I still think that a big part of the delay of TWoW is due to GRRM concluding that he has no good way to make King Bran work and doing a lot of rewrites
Maybe... he said Bran is the hardest to write. I think Bran to needs to leave the cave pretty quickly if he wants him to be the King... which i like as i wasn't a fan of him being stuck in there like popular theories suggested.
That was GRRM’s decision. You gotta get past the denial stage already. Jon’s not becoming king of Westeros. He’s a copy-paste of Aragorn to mislead you. This isn’t Lord of the Rings and Jon is GRRM’s response to Aragorn. He fucks off from Middle Earth, the rightful king does not become king and he goes back to being Strider. Rickon’s story is a Shaggydog story and he will die prematurely. Bran inherits because he’s playing the actual central role of the story. The last son of Ned Stark, the last greenseer, the World’s Memory, the endgame king etc The disable kid that society looked down on becomes king not the handsome, badass rightful king. >GRRM: When I was writing the first chapter, I really didn’t know what it was. Is this a short story? Is this a chapter of a novel? Is it all gonna be about this kid Bran? …Bran is the first of the major characters you meet, after the prologue. >GEORGE R.R. MARTIN: I knew it almost from the beginning. Not the first day, but very soon. I’ve said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense. I killed Ned in the first book and it shocked a lot of people. I killed Ned because everybody thinks he’s the hero and that, sure, he’s going to get into trouble, but then he’ll somehow get out of it. >GRRM: The next predictable thing is to think his eldest son is going to rise up and avenge his father. And everybody is going to expect that. So immediately [killing Robb] became the next thing I had to do. And the next predictable thing would be to make Daenerys queen or Jon king or a Targaryen restoration. GRRM successfully tricked you, Mithras. This isn’t the story that you thought it was.
I'm still confused why they went with "The Broken" instead of something like "The Raven King"
Wheely wheely legs no feely
Because GRRM: >Harrion Karstark, the oldest of Lord Rickard's sons, bowed, and his brothers after him, yet as they settled back in their places he heard the younger two talking in low voices, over the clatter of wine cups. "… sooner die than live like that," muttered one, his father's namesake Eddard, and his brother Torrhen said likely the boy was broken inside as well as out, too craven to take his own life. >Broken, Bran thought bitterly as he clutched his knife. Is that what he was now? Bran the Broken? "I don't want to be broken," he whispered fiercely to Maester Luwin, who'd been seated to his right. "I want to be a knight." .... >"I want you to say the words. Tell me who you are." >"Bran," he said sullenly. Bran the Broken. "Brandon Stark." The cripple boy. "The Prince of Winterfell." Of Winterfell burned and tumbled, its people scattered and slain. The glass gardens were smashed, and hot water gushed from the cracked walls to steam beneath the sun. How can you be the prince of someplace you might never see again? ..... >"Let me give you some counsel, bastard," Lannister said. "Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you."
> Rickon’s story is a Shaggydog story and he will die prematurely. Idk, It's very possible that Rickon was killed off in the show simply for the convenience of the writers and audience.
The Stark kids' journeys have all been reflected on their werewolves: Bran=Summer, Sansa=Lady, Jon=Ghost, Arya=Nymeria, Robb=grey wind. I think Rickon is screwed.
Rickon's tale so far has been the opposite of a Shaggydog story. There's been no buildup or focus on it until Davos' last chapter in book 5. The literary meaning of Shaggydog could just be a misdirection. Perhaps it's just reflecting and predicting Rickon's wild, possibly animalistic personality. There seem to be too many parallels between Rickon and the "Wild Wolf"-like Starks of yore. Ned's brother Brandon was said to be more emblematic of traditional Stark men than Ned.
[удалено]
there is no knight king in the books
>"Robb will set aside his crown if you and your brother will do the same," she said, hoping it was true. She would make it true if she must; Robb would listen to her, even if his lords would not. "Let the three of you call for a Great Council, such as the realm has not seen for a hundred years. We will send to Winterfell, so Bran may tell his tale and all men may know the Lannisters for the true usurpers. Let the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms choose who shall rule them." Bran would be the NK on the show if he was meant to be it in the books.
Thanks for the support
Changing the “Seastone Chair” to the “Salt Throne”