Last Season Of Pubes And Dragons (Aka Game Of Thrones)

[Skywalkre]

Another possibility is that they're doing the best with what GRRM gave them. We know the showrunners are going off the general outline GRRM told them. Maybe the latter is struggling to release books because he's finding it difficult to make his general outline actually work in detail.

 

I don't know how many of you have followed news of what the various leaks have said will happen. Some of these folks have been spot on with all their leaks so far and what those individuals are saying will happen in the last two episodes is just... yeah... I'm not sure there's any way they could have wrapped this up in a way that would match the quality of the start of this series.

[Panzermann]

My biggest issue (I think) are the characters.

Characters I used to find good/bad/intersting, I no longer care about. At all. That the rest makes little sense only add up the negative.

 

You are probably right about about the GRRM outlining, but still, how hard can it be to find decent writers? Consultants? Editors?

I mean, even the writers/directors/etc must see that this is crap.

 

Deadlines have to be met.

 

 

 

GRRM says he will release his next song of Ice and Fire books, when they are done. I guess he really does not know, how to tie it all together yet.

[Skywalkre]

The other part of this equation is why have these last two seasons been rushed? Is the show just so expensive to make now they don't have the time to give to these stories like they used to?

 

There was a great post on reddit yesterday where someone was mentioning how in the books there are chapters upon chapters to some of the most obscure story arcs. GRRM gives everything the detail it needs to be fully flushed out. As such, if (and at this point given his age and health I think it's unlikely we see all the books published) GRRM finishes this series we'll likely see current arcs that just feel off given the full amount of pages needed so they make sense (if that's possible... I'm leaning towards his overall story wasn't fully thought out and he's having trouble making it work).

 

To some extent the same can be said about the series. In previous seasons they gave far more time to a lot of these subplots (some that they didn't even need to) and that just hasn't happened the last two seasons. I'm curious... why?

Edited May 9, 2019 by Skywalkre

[Harold Jones]

Charles Stross blogged about the issues he's run into with writing a long series. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/03/lessons-learned-writing-really.html

 

 

 

Another problem with writing a really long series is the human ageing process. I am not now the same Charlie Stross who wrote "The Atrocity Archive" in 1999-2000, or "The Family Trade" in 2002. I'm 17-20 years older than that guy. I am middle-aged, with middle-aged memory issues and middle-aged personality changes and middle-aged perspectives on life. I might, at a stretch, be able to parody my younger self's writing style and interests, but I don't really want to write about the same things now that I was writing about back then. So the original series plan may no longer even be appealing or interesting to you if you try to stick to it religiously—you need to be able to redesign your project on the fly, taking into account the already-published books that are already set in stone, if only by layering new interpretations of old story elements on them.

 

GRRM is older and sicker than CS so I can only imagine continuing is even harder. If GRRM doesn't finish the series off, there's always the chance that it will get the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time posthumous treatment. My understanding is that Brandon Sanderson did a fantastic job wrapping up what had turned into a bloated wandering monstrosity of a series.

[Allan W]

My prediction. Arya kills Daenerys. Jon ends up on the iron throne...

[TonyE]

That was a hard watch actually, in therms of brutallity, the episode was fairly good.

Edited May 13, 2019 by TonyE

[Soren Ras]

Better than I had expected. There was a certain grim inevitability over the proceedings. Couple of quibbles from my side, but compared to the last two weeks, decidedly minor.

 

--

Soren

[Harold Jones]

Since I can't watch the show I've been following discussions here and on a few other sites, plus reading various recappers and this quote seems to sum up the general view of this season.

 

 

 

Yeah it is really staggering to the finish line, pants full and dripping.

[Soren Ras]

Maybe it's just because the season has been lackluster the first four episodes (or 2-4 I should say, I didn't have any issue with episode 1), but episode 5 last night was a marked step up in my opinion.

 

--

Soren

[beans4]

The Twitter comments have been amusing. Benioff & Weiss are getting ripped pretty good, though I suspect most of the stuff in this ep was in Martin's outline.

[Mobius]

You find there are a lot of Youtube podcasters that have given up on the show. Often saying their last 8 years as fans have been a waste.

[DB]

The cynic in me suggests that those people see more views in trashing it now that the gravy train is running out.

 

I've never watched the show, tried the first book and loathed it. Never finished it.

[Skywalkre]

Ahh... r/freefolk.

 

 

I saw a comment the other day claiming HBO was more than willing to give time and money to flush out the ending. The claim was the showrunners passed in favor of these expedited last two seasons. If so... why? The consensus I'm seeing is now that folks are resigned to where the show has gone (I know some folks who were holding out hope despite the hints) they're all asking why was this all rushed? The only answers that make any sense aren't good ones (burnout, showrunners wanting to move on to something else, GRRM gave them a poor or incomplete guide to work off of, yadda, yadda...).

Edited May 13, 2019 by Skywalkre

[Burncycle360]

^ Says it all

[Harold Jones]

You find there are a lot of Youtube podcasters that have given up on the show. Often saying their last 8 years as fans have been a waste.

Not sure why they would call it a waste. If they enjoyed the shows leading up to the current shows how is it a waste? If they didn't enjoy them why did they keep watching?

[Ivanhoe]

I saw a comment the other day claiming HBO was more than willing to give time and money to flush out the ending.

Freudian slip? LOL

 

Prediction; Arya dies, Jon dies, Dani dies, Cersei dies, Sansa takes the Iron Throne.

 

p.s. where has Dorne been in all this?

[Corinthian]

Unless she has ambitions herself, Sansa has no claim to the Iron Throne.

 

This will end with Dany dead, Jon on the throne, Arya possibly dead, and Bran becoming the Night King.

 

Dorne is over.

[Soren Ras]

The sand snakes plotlines made everyone in Dorne die of shame, so the whole country is now a wasteland with some unknown urchin pretending to be Prince of Dorne. Only he thinks dragons are hella cool, hence the reference to the Prince of Dorne pledging support for the psycho queen.

 

Aside from a few of the highest level nobles getting killed in various more or less memorable ways, Dorne has come through the entire series almost completely unscathed. Props to the late Prince Doran for seeing his priorities clearly. The only mistake he made was sending his brother off to King's Landing to attend a royal wedding, which led to a series of unfortunate events that cost him his head, (but still has not impacted the livelihood and prosperity of his country).

 

As for the current vogue of thrashing GoT, that is the cool and sophisticated consensus at the moment. Obviously, the last few seasons have not matched the earlier ones in quality, so there is plenty of stuff to gripe about, and I suspect some lemming effect is part of it.

Retroactively declaring the series as a whole a waste, however, is just silly. It was and as a whole remains a landmark series.

 

 

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Soren

[bojan]

IDK, for me a greater waste is something that started well above average and then turned to a turd than a straight turd from a beginning to an end.

I am not gonna bother with 2nd one, I will invest time and then be disappointed by a first one.

While some oscillation in quality is expected (hell, "The Wire" which I hold as a gold standard for the quality TV series had significant oscillations in quality) there is a limit where I am simply not interested in it anymore. For me that happened after 5th season, than I forced myself to watch 6th hoping it would be better (pure sunken cost fallacy...). I did not even bother with 7th or 8th.

So yeah, for me as a whole series it was a waste of time.

Edited May 14, 2019 by bojan

[Soren Ras]

Fair enough.

 

--

Soren

[beans4]

I'm wondering if whoever or whatever R'hllor the Lord of Light is, dried up and blew away when Melisandre did, or whether he/she/it still has a role to play in the last ep. Guess I'll be finding out in a few days.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Im hearing on some websites they are already gearing up to make a prequel called Bloodmoon.

[sunday]

Part of probably the best reaction to the fifth episode of the season I've seen:

Vamos, es que a mí me matan a TODOS los que quiero, y si tengo un dragón le meto dos altavoces en las alas, pongo Wagner a todo trapo y reparto napalm hasta que no queda un puto rastrojo en pie en todos los Siete Reinos. Y luego construyo el paraíso sobre las cenizas.

 

Free translation:

 

Come on, if they kill ALL THE PEOPLE I love, and if I have a dragon, then I will put two speakers on its wings, and go blaring Wagner and throwing napalm until there is not a bush left in all of the Seven Kingdoms. Then I build paradise on the ashes.

 

Edited May 14, 2019 by sunday

[Burncycle360]

My take on the general direction of the show

Dany's entire plotline revolved around whether or not she was fated to become her father, and every aspect of her arc was balancing the realities of being a ruler with good intentions in an imperfect world (which sometimes requires tough decisions), or taking the easy way out and abusing her newfound power to achieve her ends, and how fine a line there is between the two. I haven't really been rooting for her personally, but I can see how the route they've decided she will take is frustrating to people who have been rooting for her this whole time. I think it was a terrible decision by the show writers and from what I understand George RR Martin didn't give them direction that this is what he always intended to happen either. It was lazy writing -- sure the journey needed to come to a head and she must face a final moment where she has to decide whether or not to give into her own worst impulses, but that was about the least satisfying way I could think of that they brought that up. If after all this time, all it takes for her to snap and kill everyone is her retinue not being there constantly reminding her not to, then what has she learned? Where is her character development?

I would have done this episode differently just as a casual watcher. Tyrion convinces Dany that Jaime might be trying to stop Cersei and not join her, and she agrees to let him try -- if he's joining her, he'll just die with her, and if he's going to stop her well at least she did all she could. If the bells ring, stop the attack. Due to acting we're still not sure what his intentions are, he probably isn't either.

Now, setting aside for a moment that Scorpions are now scripted to be utterly useless when they were ultra-deadly previously, let's go ahead and assume the dragon destroyed Euron's fleet and burst open the gate for the soldiers waiting outside. Let's say the Golden Company aren't posted up there to die after all that anticipation as to how bad-ass they are. Good guys burst in, epic street fighting ensues against Red Cloaks. Upon seeing their lines struggling to hold, commander killed, dragon exploding all the scorpions on the wall and menacing overhead, and John telling him Cersei is going to lose, the subordinate commander surrenders his forces after his HQ element is pressed directly as per the episode. He gives the order to ring the bells to alert the rest of the Red Cloaks to lay down their arms, much to the relief of Tyrion who comes in just in time to witness (this with his axe), because he can't help himself and we all know we want to see that. Just as the runners are heading to ring the bell, the Golden Company shows up from behind the Red Cloaks, kills the runners, and starts attacking both the Red Cloaks (because they're dirty giver uppers) there and the good guys. Well crap. The rest of the red cloaks never got the message and keep fighting. From above, Dany and Dro-bro are seeing the battle lines stalled and John's center group being directly pushed back by Golden Company bro's in the middle of the streets with innocents. She's faced with losing the battle, or losing her self if she decides to roll in hot like an A-10 and just torch the baddies, civilians and all.

Tyrion knows what's going through her head, this is about to go south as he looks back and forth between the Dragon making dry runs and the empty belltower...

You know what happens next. Oh yes. Dany decides she can't lose after all she's been through, time to torch everything, and just as she rolls in hot, going over her nine line in her head, we see Tyrion's little ass scrambling up the bell tower and start ringing that bell. John looks up at the belltower like "you go man!" but you also know what's coming. He's struck down by a Golden Company nobody... but he still keeps ringing that bell as long as he can until he finally falls. The NSA and Amazon records the greatest simultaneous Alexa monitored shouting and WTF moment of 2019, because Tyrion... and anyway, it looks like it didn't work over the din of battle because tension building. But suddenly, just as Dany is entering GBU-dracarys range, all the bells start ringing and she hears it. The message got through! The Red Cloaks cease fighting, and the Golden Company can't do it themselves so John is able to push back and win. Tyrion simultaenously saved Dani from herself, and the thousands of innocents from barbecue. Not wine and a girl, but not a bad alternative all things considered.

Dany picks up John and now focuses on the red keep, torching the place. Cersei retreats to the Holdfast, but let's not make it TOO easy... hidden scorpion KABLAM, hole through dragon wing and drogon ends up crashing onto one of the red keep parapets tossing Dany and John. "I can't lose you too dragon bro, get the hell out of here!" Dany says as they have a touching moment, and at first Drogon refuses to leave her but John assures him it'll be okay and it flies off reluctantly. Now Dany doesn't have any more crutches, it's time to earn it.

The Hound sees his Bro and attacks as per the episode, not realizing he's an unkillable zombie. After an epic but futile fight, the life is choked out of him and he's tossed aside, apparently dead -- Arya walks in just in time to see this. Why? Because since when does she listen to what anyone tells her she should do? This has been an epic journey. She goes night king stabby on Gregor because hell yes, that's why, but unfortunately didn't know he was invincible either, and so she's soon up against the wall with her eyeballs and skull being squished, as is Gregor tradition. Everyone's clutching their pearls, first Tyrion and now this? But just as she's about to be killed, the Hound comes back in out of nowhere and tackles his ass through the wall, and they fall into burning abyss as per episode, saving Arya. She runs down the stairs after Cersei, but then decides here to heed the Hound's words and instead takes off in the other direction to help evacuate civilians from the burning red keep. Way to have grown Arya, what a nice wrap up of that story arc.

Jaime kills Euron, tells him he's the real daddy and the smug, poorly written character finally expresses some emotional depth of realization that his story ends without much ado. Much satisfaction all around.

Dany and John fight their way to the Holdfast to find Cersei and Jaime, who appears to have joined her and stands between them. Well crap. He wants to get her out of there, but they're trapped, and Dany says she isn't leaving alive. Having gone through all stages of grief earlier, Cersei says then nobody will, and orders Jaime to burn them all and set off what's left of the wildfire. With John busy fighting off guards, it looks like they're screwed. Jaime is faced with some sort of trope involving a wheel, destiny, and what goes around comes back around... after some facial expression acting , Jaime closes his eyes and comes to a realization... right before killing Cersei. WHAAAAT? Oh yes they did.

Last episode? Dany realizes power is too much for one person and her and John rule the place together, having accepted who he is. People rejoice and buy the box set because damn what a series.

There, a non-writer and nobody wrote a story line that was way more satisfying. You're welcome.

Edited May 14, 2019 by Burncycle360

[Soren Ras]

Well done.

 

Soren