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Visanideth

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
4,771
So, I guess the moral of the story is: Those who have a vision, goals and ambition, those who want to make the world a better place, those who fight tooth and nail are shunned, punished and killed. Those who never did anything and only care about themselves then come and reap all the rewards. I deleted the books from my Kindle. I wish I had never started with this series. Five books, eight seasons of one-hour episodes, all that time I won't get back.

It's really hard to reconcile this kind of "I can't accept an ending that isn't a moral thriump and a fairytale message" with all the criticism about the subtlety and quality in the writing.

It's one thing or the other. You can't simulataneously condemn the script for being predictable tripe but also complain that the good guys didn't win and good things happen to bad people.
 

DonaldKimball

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,413
Her plan was to destroy the red keep only, if she did just that they would have taken the city with minimal casualties and without Missandei dying.

But suddenly Tyrion and Varys had 21st century morals and Sansa thought she was Regina from Mean Girls.

Yeah it didn't make any sense. And suddenly everyone is a clairvoyant and saw it coming a mile away.

Pretty sure most people expected the innocents in the red keep to play some part in Dany's downfall, not the entire city.
 

Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
34,294
GRRM: "My own heroes are the dreamers, those men and women who tried to make the world a better place than when they found it, whether in small ways or great ones. Some succeeded, some failed, most had mixed results... but it is the effort that's heroic, as I see it. Win or lose, I admire those who fight the good fight."
Now I'm starting to think that Daenerys will go down like the Boss; a heroic figured who sacrificed it all and who started the undoings of tyranny and monarchy, but will be unfairly remembered as a cruel tyrant by history because of tragic circumstances.
 

Principate

Member
Oct 31, 2017
11,186
Her plan was to destroy the red keep only, if she did just that they would have taken the city with minimal casualties and without Missandei dying.

But suddenly Tyrion and Varys had 21st century morals and Sansa thought she was Regina from Mean Girls.
None of that contradicts original Tyrions point that ultimately persuaded her she wouldn't have been able to rule very easily that way. He was incompetent about everything else but even in the case of destroying the red keep and the massive civilian loss that would entail ruling afterwards would be extremely difficult.
 

Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
34,294
I don't think it'd be unfair after her actions :p

Although Tyrion didn't make it into the history books apparantly so even knows if Dany will.
Yeah I meant in the real ending sorry ;)
I'm not being entirely serious anyhow. But GRRM's quote is interesting in that it does at least reassure us that he's not gonna push this message that ambition is bad yadda yadda
 

Lunar Wolf

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
Bran used Meera Reed to get to the Cave of the CotF, maxed out his 3ER abilities, went back home and bluntly discarded her, used Dany to protect himself and Winterfell then engineered her downfall down to the smallest details, then all but ensured he would be elected King.

The first thing he apparently does as King? Try to locate Drogon, arguably the only threat left that could challenge his rule.

Unless D&D were just clueless planting all these seeds it seems likely that Bran isn't one of the good guys.

There might be more to the NK wanting to kill Bran than the one explanation we hear from Bran himself.

"Why do you think I came all this way here for?"

38f0b23edb1b23792d1abf0a06f7fc275200ff0f.jpg


"You were exactly where you were supposed to be."

Game-of-Thrones-Finale-Jon-Kills-Daenerys.jpg
 

Hercule

Member
Jun 20, 2018
5,375
Jon Snow executed a child.

- and he is our primary protagonist.

----

?


That can't be right?

But he is better than Daenarys, because --- because...


...because he doesn't want power?
Jon was heartbroken because of it but the kid killed him. He had to do it. Last time I checked the children of Kings landing didn't kill Dany. Or maybe I missed something
 

Jiggy

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
9,267
wherever
Yeah I meant in the real ending sorry ;)
I'm not being entirely serious anyhow. But GRRM's quote is interesting in that it does at least reassure us that he's not gonna push this message that ambition is bad yadda yadda

Dany's downfall in the books is going to be fascinating. I feel like George will parallel her story with Stannis.

I'm a lot more excited for the war with (f)Aegon too knowing the likely endpoint for Dany's character.

Any day now, George. Any day now.
 

kiguel182

Member
Oct 31, 2017
9,440
Bran being "bad" or"good" is never conveyed in the show. He is just there.

He is clearly a "bad" person in the sense that he doesn't seem to have an empathy but he is never seen as an active person. He exists and things happen around him.

Which is part of the reason him being king is kinda ridiculous. Who would trust him and why?

Maybe it would work with a three eyed raven that gave us something, anything, resembling a character. Or maybe the reasons should've been better than "he has a great story and can't have kids" since everyone has a good story and not having kids is not that useful when the next king they choose will have them probably which means "breaking the wheel" can't rest on that.

But this is the show that introduced real time traveling to only use it to explain why Hodor is named Hodor and nothing else.

Reading the plot points isn't that bad, but the execution killed it.

In a more positive note I think I like Drogon melting the throne more now. I thought it was forced but in retrospective it was pretty cool and fitting.
 

Lunar Wolf

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
Drogan not killing Jon would be better with some foreshadowing.

Bran becoming King is a great idea, ruined by trash writing.

Grey Worm capturing Jon and Tyrions trial was awkward.

GRRM has a ridiculous bias to the Starks

The Starks are heroes of the story. The literal main characters. He knows they'll end up at top hence why they suffer so much throughout the story.
 

Rendering...

Member
Oct 30, 2017
19,089
Tyrion, the imp, accused killer of King Joffrey, killer of Tywin Lannister, hand of the Mad Queen?

Never heard of him.
Yeah, Joffrey choked on a bagel, Tywin strained too hard on the pooper, and the Mad Queen had no need for counselors! Why include such an obviously made up figure as the Imp in a history book, hmm?
 

Kirblar

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
30,744
Dany's downfall in the books is going to be fascinating. I feel like George will parallel her story with Stannis.

I'm a lot more excited for the war with (f)Aegon too knowing the likely endpoint for Dany's character.

Any day now, George. Any day now.
Stannis and Littlefinger seems like clear parallel characters to Dany and Bloodraven/3ER.
 

kiguel182

Member
Oct 31, 2017
9,440
All those years of people saying "if you think this ends well you haven't been paying attention".

And it ends well! lol Dany died but she "went mad" so the "good guys" still won.

Tyrion failed upwards.

Bran is king.

Sansa freed Winterfell and is Queen.

Arya went exploring.

Jon went back to the north after having saved the world (his whole goal in the show). He got the worst since he had to kill someone he loved but could've been worse I guess.
 

Lunar Wolf

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
I'm guessing GRRM/D&D thought this was meant to be a transition to something resembling a representative democracy but yeah it's not really. It's kinda like the Holy Roman Empire and even ignoring that it doesn't represent a natural or stable transition towards democracy.

GRRM isn't really setting up what D & D are setting up. Benioff and Weiss are going for a mundane elective monarchy because they're trying to keep it as mundane as possible with GRRM's endpoint but that's ignoring the implications of what King Bran means.

GRRM is setting up a high fantasy governed police state theocracy where Bran is both Westeros' king and god. Similar to what Bran's mentor did.
 

Lunar Wolf

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
Just finished the Dance of Dragons part of Fire and Blood.


That might be the most depressed any fantasy book has ever made me. It was just so........WASTEFUL. It wasn't even the Targaryen madness that set them on the path to almost all the dragons and Targaryens dying during the Dance either it was just simple greed and stupidity. And the vast majority of the Targaryens that died weren't even bad. They were not not even the worst of the lot. Only a handful of the ones that died were actually bad people and even fewer of them actually deserved to die.

I mean Old King Jaehaerys and Good Queen Alysanne set the Targaryens up to be a dynasty that would last for a thousand years and be loved by the people for all of those years and then their shit kids and Grand-kids just pissed all of it away via greed and stupidity. And not just that, but their stupidity was aided and abetted by literally every single noble house in Westeros except for Dorne.


The ones that suffered most were the common people. And the Targaryens that suffered the worst was the children of the morons that started it all. The parents effectively sentenced their children die along with half the 7 kingdoms over a glorified pissing match about titles and inheritance. As if the ones who weren't on the Iron Throne weren't already rich beyond their dreams and living in comfort.


The Dance of Dragons makes the current squabbles over the throne look like a slap fight. Wasteful is the only word I can come up with.



P.S. On a related note Fire and Blood might be the best literary purchase I have made in 2 years.

The Dance with Dragons really sets up the ending to ASOIAF though.

All the claimants knock each other out.

Aegon the Broken King/Bran the Broken, despite being 11 years old, lands on the throne and their Hand is a disfigured second son Lannister that used to fight on the opposite side to the king but is intelligent and effective as Hand.
 

Linus815

Member
Oct 29, 2017
19,681
Just came across an interest fan theory that Bran set everything in motion by pressuring Sam to tell Jon who his true father was. The Dark Bran theory is really interesting. Especially when you consider his quote last night when he was offered the throne.

It sounds very interesting and rather logical.

So I'm fully expecting D&D to reveal in the documentary on Sunday that Bran was a good guy all along and he had no idea he'd end up being the king.
 

Barneystuta

Member
Nov 4, 2017
1,637
I've had a chance to digest the final season now. The production values and set pieces were incredible... but that was not what made GoT.

GoT was about the political intrigue, the characters and their motivations, and the back stabbing (both in a literal and philosophical sense). In 6 final episodes we got 2 epic battles... but what did we lose?

I think I can summarise my thoughts to two root cause issues.

1. I didn't believe the Jon/Danny love story - It made story sense. It made narrative sense. It made physical sense (both good looking humans). But, I just never believed it. Compare it to the relationships they've had in the past, they built the love up. This just felt forced to fit the story.

This then has a knock on effect of all the Danny/Jon story. Danny turning to the darkside, Jon killing her, everything. If I really believed how hard it was for one (or both) of them to take the actions they took, I would have been more onboard.

2. Cercei did very little this season, went out with a wimper, I wanted more. Her character deserved more! - Cercei went out with a complete wimper and took Jamie with her. Yes, the Messandi killing was intense... that was it really.

OK, it was a battle she was going to lose, perhaps she saw that and accepted it, her 'Mum' instinct took over. This all felt forced so that she could have the reunion with Jamie. Which then ties into the Jamie/Euron scene (awful) and spoils the Jamie redemption arc. It was a good scene with Tyrion at the end, but was that really all worth it?

After the above, most of the other stuff starts to 'make sense' to fit the narrative. it feels like they had a couple of major story beats they needed to hit (either themselves or from GRRM) and they crammed it all in to hit those beats.

I'll reflect on GoT as one of the biggest TV shows of all time, a very good experience with some fantastic moments... that lost some of what made it great many TV shows do.
 

Visanideth

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
4,771
It's interesting how people are seeing this as an happy ending.

The main protagonists - the Stark family - are a shattered, broken family.

Arya travels west because she's become a murder machine who doesn't feel like she can live next to the people she used to love.

Sansa is left to rule the North alone, constantly thorn between appeasing her power hungry, sovranist vassals and cooperating with her brother.

Bran is pretty dead, a simple husk for some transcendent being who somehow has taken control of the world. The kid is gone, and the Borg took over.

Jon Snow, the hero that was promised, the chosen one, lost every woman he loved, and killed the one he loved the most. He never becomes the grand epic character we expected, he retires to grow old in the cold north and will probably be forever tormented by the memories of having killed the woman who saved his live time and time again and that he considered the rightful ruler for the realms.


It's bleak as fuck. None of these people will be happy.
 

Visanideth

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
4,771
2. Cercei did very little this season, went out with a wimper, I wanted more. Her character deserved more! - Cercei went out with a complete wimper and took Jamie with her. Yes, the Messandi killing was intense... that was it really.

To be fair, I think the show somehow propped Cersei beyond her real value. She's completely worthless in the books.
 

Lunar Wolf

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
A woman who started the series, in her own words, being sold like a broodmare, verbally, physically and sexually abused by her brother, raped repeatedly, developed stockholm syndrome for her rapist, watched her rapist kill her brother after the latter threatened to cut out her unborn child with a sword, who managed to scrape and claw her way to some kind of power with her rapist and used it to help others (claiming the Lhazareen women as daughters so the Dothraki couldn't rape them), lost her unborn child, was forced to kill her rapist, hatched dragons from stone eggs, decided she couldn't let anyone else suffer as she had suffered and she could not leave for Westeros while there were still slaves in Essos ("Then we have 200,000 reasons to take the city"), freed thousands of slaves, was, in the end, turned into Dragon Hitler over the course of an episode and a half and ended up being put down like a rabid dog by the man who claimed to love her so that he could feel really sad about it.

You don't see how that could be sexist?

The message here is, to paraphrase an article I read on the subject: Westeros would have been off if Dany was still getting raped, because power makes bitches crazy, amirite?

Dany helped save Westeros and end the White walker threat forever
 

Dr. Mario

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,817
Netherlands
There are definite shades of Tolkien (not even shades, Arya taking a boat west was too fucking on the nose). But the Stark family was fully broken in season 2. At least the individual members are at a place where they were all the most happy. Jon Snow among the wildlings, Sansa on a throne but not as a trophy wife, Arya wandering the unknowns by herself and Bran the cripple the most powerful man in Westeros.
 

Kirblar

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
30,744
There are definite shades of Tolkien (not even shades, Arya taking a boat west was too fucking on the nose). But the Stark family was fully broken in season 2. At least the individual members are at a place where they were all the most happy. Jon Snow among the wildlings, Sansa on a throne but not as a trophy wife, Arya wandering the unknowns by herself.
The climax of the series being a Scouring of the Shire is a total Tolkien homage.
 

Cup O' Tea?

Member
Nov 2, 2017
3,603
Man it was a weak finale for many reasons but the Dragon melting the iron throne was one of the stupidest parts of the whole series.
 

Kirblar

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
30,744
Man it was a weak finale for many reasons but the Dragon melting the iron throne was one of the stupidest parts of the whole series.
Watch it be Arya warging Drogon instead in the books, which would at least make some sense. (Burn the throne she hates, roast Dany's remaining forces to remove the plot hole where they have to sail away randomly, attempt to cover up Dany's assassination by grabbing the body.)
 

Lunar Wolf

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
It seems to me that GRRM likely gave D&D a list of where characters end up (Bran is king, Cersi is dead, Jon goes to the Night's Watch, Sansa is queen of the north, Dany is killed etc...) years ago with the assumption they'd at least get book six to help them get the characters closer to the finale.

That didn't happen and D&D were forced to write it themselves (and apparently their relationship with GRRM broke down in the process). So to be honest that makes me feel a little better about where everybody ended up. Of course the journey on how they got there is a mess.

One side note, I see it mentioned a lot that Bran plays a big role in the books but was a pretty minor character here. I think that could explain why GRRM picked him as king but why his choice seems so weird in the show. They failed miserably in developing Bran's character given where he ends up.

Yep. But I'm pretty sure that GRRM picked him from the start. GRRM's mentioned that Bran was the first character he created and the story grew from the first chapter that he wrote for him/ASOIAF in general.

A boy finds wolf pups in the snow with his father.
 

HotHamBoy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
16,423
It's interesting how people are seeing this as an happy ending.

The main protagonists - the Stark family - are a shattered, broken family.

Arya travels west because she's become a murder machine who doesn't feel like she can live next to the people she used to love.

Sansa is left to rule the North alone, constantly thorn between appeasing her power hungry, sovranist vassals and cooperating with her brother.

Bran is pretty dead, a simple husk for some transcendent being who somehow has taken control of the world. The kid is gone, and the Borg took over.

Jon Snow, the hero that was promised, the chosen one, lost every woman he loved, and killed the one he loved the most. He never becomes the grand epic character we expected, he retires to grow old in the cold north and will probably be forever tormented by the memories of having killed the woman who saved his live time and time again and that he considered the rightful ruler for the realms.


It's bleak as fuck. None of these people will be happy.
But that's not at all how the show frames it
 

DonaldKimball

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,413
Just rewatched the episode and the scene with Jon and Dany still doesn't make sense. She acts like a completely different character. Totally detached from reality.
 

fanboi

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
6,702
Sweden
You know what would be cool?

In 10-15 years, they do a sequel series, with the orginal cast. It all starts with Jon in the North beyond the wall, out hunting... when the sun is darken and forth comes... Drogo, scarred and fatigued, Jon tries to understand what have happend.

Que, Asshai, a dark blood magic went wrong... something fundamentaly changed.

3ER collapes and dies.