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Game of Thrones (Spoilers for the latest episodes)


Wander89

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I haven't watched more than season one of the show (and read books 1-3) but I'm pretty up to date on the show thanks to willingly spoiling myself.

But this had me chuckling:

35 minutes ago, Orlion the Platypus said:

The Westeros nobles have just elected an Eternal God King that sees them when they're sleeping and knows when they're awake! 

Eternal God King? Westeros is Tukar, confirmed. :D

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It's interesting that most of the reaction to the last season has focused on character arcs rather than fantasy aspects of the worldbuilding.  My personal opinion is that the character outcomes were fine although a little rushed, while I felt the fantasy side of things was frustratingly underdeveloped.   It wasn't quite a violation of Sanderson's First Law, because not much of the conflict got solved using magic, but so much time was spent establishing magical abilities of leading characters, I thought it sidled right up and pushed against that 'law'.  For instance:

  • Face shifting powers were a major part of all the time spent on Arya's assassin training.  She used them once, and then... nothing.  Even though her assassin skills proved critically important, and she was in situations where hiding her identity could have been useful.  Perhaps this was a one-time-only power?  We just don't know enough about how it works.  If you're going to show a leading character develop an ability, then show her not using it, you need to explain why not!
     
  • Ditto Bran's powers.  Much time spent on the story of how he gained them.  He turned out pretty important.  But what exactly are these powers?  Still completely unclear to me.  I kinda want to believe he masterminded the whole thing and knew how it would turn out the whole time.  In which case he's actually a really dark character, having used Hodor and Theon, not to mention not doing anything to stop Dany's massacre, just as steps on his way to the throne.  Was he playing the game so skillfully that he won the throne without anyone else even realizing he was playing?  I'd love this to be the case, but maybe I'm just reading too much into things because they never told us.  Perhaps his powers are much less useful, can basically only see stuff without changing things (but in that case what's with Hodor?) and is a fundamentally good person who never wanted the throne.  We just don't know.   Same as with Arya, no fair giving lead characters maybe-important powers that remain completely unexplained.
     
  • Exactly how powerful are dragons?  It's seemingly quite variable :-)
     
  • How intelligent are dragons?  I'd placed them somewhere around a dog or horse, although with a strange telepathic-ish link to Dany.  But right at the end, we learn that dragons understand character motivation and symbolism well enough to want to torch an inanimate object made out of swords. If they're that smart, surely they had complex opinions and goals and motivations all along?   Why didn't we see any of that earlier.  Now I'm full of questions about how Dany's relationship with them worked, and how being bonded to these super intelligent reptiles played into her arc.

Leaving these big questions aside, there are a few small things I think could have made a big improvement to how I felt about the last season:

  • More people needed to die in the battle with the White Walkers.  I get why they wanted to wrap that up leaving time for other plot, but it just felt too easy - intense imagery but no real cost to justify the supposed scale of the threat.  Could have killed all of Tormund, Brienne, Sam, Ghost, and the Onion Knight with no real effect on what came after but greatly increased emotional impact.  Possibly even Jamie or the Hound.
     
  • They shouldn't have explained the backstory of how the Night King was created.  If you aren't going to fully develop a magical threat, don't develop it at all and leave things mysterious.  That would have left us with a doubt of whether the threat was truly gone forever, or just one individual defeated temporarily, which would have made the ending of Jon and wildings heading north much more ambiguous and open ended.
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It really is quite strange how this entire final season felt so easy.  They skated by killing only the barest minumum of characters, both in the war for the throne, and the war against the white walkers.  The battle for winter fell especially shocked me with how few casualties it actually had, and how little bearing the fight had on the remaining three episodes.

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On 5/21/2019 at 7:36 PM, shawnhargreaves said:

The immediate pivot to Dany going after Cersei would have felt way more interesting to me if it'd taken place over a backdrop of "ffs Dany, literally two thirds of us just died in one night, and NOW you want to continue fighting against someone else?"

They couldn’t even keep to the idea that their forces were depleted.  They kept spawning in new soldiers constantly.  Not only that, but it really made the focus in season 7 of “we need cersei’s aid to fight!” Seem meaningless when they steamroll both the white walkers, and cersei’s Army.  

And yes, I’m counting it as a steam roll.  Barely any main cast casualties in the fight against the night king, or even otherwise against Cersei, counts as a major victory for the heroes.  If the only ones dying are nameless extras and C-tier main cast who most people would find expendable, your battles don’t have a lot of weight anymore.

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12 hours ago, Prince of Ravens said:

After the finale, all I could think of is: "Dany wanted to destroy the Wheel ... but the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills." 

The Dragon Reborn shall ride the winds of time! Alternatively, Arya discovers Shara. 

EDIT: Alternatively Alternatively, Bran somehow turns Westeros into the Seanchan Empire and Beyond the Wall turns into The Blight.

Edited by Use the Falchion
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On 5/18/2019 at 0:40 AM, Sorana said:

Sansa Stark. I love her. I know some love her and some don't and I don't really want to start a discussion and her - but I lover her, her comments, the way she handles things. A friend will be doing Cat Stark, so we will fit together well.

She definitely has some of the best outfits in the series. I bet there will be a lot of Queen in the North Sansa cosplayers after the finale.

Cersei and Dany have some great costumes too.

On 5/21/2019 at 2:39 AM, ZincAboutIt said:

Lol you don’t have to lie, it’s more a fault of the show. Show-Bran isn’t quite right, but so much of his plot line was internal and very magic-heavy which isn’t a direction the show went. If I had only watched the show I likely wouldn’t have enjoyed him much either. 

Yeah, I don't think D&D really knew what to do with Bran. And if the Three-Eyed Crow who teaches him really is Bloodraven, as the popular fan-theory suggests, it would be hard for them to do that plotline justice when they've never mentioned anything about Bloodraven before.

On 5/21/2019 at 5:32 AM, NottTheBrave said:

Not that I think that ending would have been good either, but with the way it ended, it only felt like they made Dany go mad just so that they wouldn't have a 100% happy ending for the sake of it.

They tried to make it seem like they'd been setting this up for a long time, with Tyrion's line about how "Everywhere she goes, evil men die, and we cheer her for it," but that rang hollow to me. The pacing issue was part of it, but also, of course people were cheering for her. She was freeing slaves! One could argue that Dany went off the rails in a smaller way when she burned the Tarlys, but Tyrion seems to be arguing that her mission was misguided from the start. I don't think D&D made anywhere near a sufficient case for that, and honestly, trying to convince the audience that Abe Lincoln With Dragons is actually a bad guy might be a tall order even for a storyteller of GRRM's caliber.

On 5/21/2019 at 1:20 PM, shawnhargreaves said:
  • How intelligent are dragons?  I'd placed them somewhere around a dog or horse, although with a strange telepathic-ish link to Dany.  But right at the end, we learn that dragons understand character motivation and symbolism well enough to want to torch an inanimate object made out of swords. If they're that smart, surely they had complex opinions and goals and motivations all along?   Why didn't we see any of that earlier.  Now I'm full of questions about how Dany's relationship with them worked, and how being bonded to these super intelligent reptiles played into her arc.

 

I'd like to know that too! Actually, one way to do Daenerys's fall to evil more convincingly might be to have the psychic bond with the dragons be a two-way street. They are apex predators, and so maybe she becomes more violent and conquest-driven (one might even say "draconian") over time. It would fit well with the saying in the books that "magic is a sword without a hilt," too. Dragons are fundamentally magical creatures, but using magic isn't always safe. And unlike most Targs, Dany has three dragons, which could make their mental influence harder to resist.

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On 5/23/2019 at 9:17 PM, The Kraken's Daughter said:

 

They tried to make it seem like they'd been setting this up for a long time, with Tyrion's line about how "Everywhere she goes, evil men die, and we cheer her for it," but that rang hollow to me. The pacing issue was part of it, but also, of course people were cheering for her. She was freeing slaves! One could argue that Dany went off the rails in a smaller way when she burned the Tarlys, but Tyrion seems to be arguing that her mission was misguided from the start. I don't think D&D made anywhere near a sufficient case for that, and honestly, trying to convince the audience that Abe Lincoln With Dragons is actually a bad guy might be a tall order even for a storyteller of GRRM's caliber.

It's also incredibly hypocritical.  At this point, nearly every single main character has killed evil people in the series.  The logic that "good person killed bad person and that's bad" is incredibly non-sensical.  The writers basically treat Arya as a god, and that is the entierity of her character.  Good girl kills all the bad guys.  Except they didn't try to phone in a nonsense message that we're all awful people for having liked Arya.  

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I liked the ending enough so that I won't have a bitter taste every time I remember the show. But that's the thing, the ending is about the only thing I actually liked about this season, it's like they just wrote the final minutes and didn't care about the rest. This seems just like a big case of destination before journey.

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  • 3 months later...
On 5/23/2019 at 9:17 PM, The Kraken's Daughter said:

They tried to make it seem like they'd been setting this up for a long time, with Tyrion's line about how "Everywhere she goes, evil men die, and we cheer her for it," but that rang hollow to me. The pacing issue was part of it, but also, of course people were cheering for her. She was freeing slaves! One could argue that Dany went off the rails in a smaller way when she burned the Tarlys, but Tyrion seems to be arguing that her mission was misguided from the start. I don't think D&D made anywhere near a sufficient case for that, and honestly, trying to convince the audience that Abe Lincoln With Dragons is actually a bad guy might be a tall order even for a storyteller of GRRM's caliber.

 

On 5/25/2019 at 5:20 PM, NottTheBrave said:

It's also incredibly hypocritical.  At this point, nearly every single main character has killed evil people in the series.  The logic that "good person killed bad person and that's bad" is incredibly non-sensical.  The writers basically treat Arya as a god, and that is the entierity of her character.  Good girl kills all the bad guys.  Except they didn't try to phone in a nonsense message that we're all awful people for having liked Arya.  

I could believe it of book Dany.  Book Dany is actually quite nasty in a lot of ways.  She is unstable and delights in personal vengeful actions.  If you want to make the scene better just have them refuse to ring the bells.  Dany keeps uping her casualties and they still refuse until the city is gone or Arya shoots her.

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