[TV/Books] Game of Thrones ***SPOILER Discussion***

[Independent voter]

GRRM says he'll write the last 2 books and we'll read them and then decide how close they are to the tv series.

Thing about written fiction is you often get the character's thoughts, so well see what Dany was thinking one way or another.

[Celista]

Wilding leader: where's Mance?
Jon: he's dead.
Wilding leader: how?
Jon: i shot an arrow thru his heart.

I think people are forgetting how Jon works.

Yeah he is not all that bright sometimes.

[Celista]

GRRM says he'll write the last 2 books and we'll read them and then decide how close they are to the tv series.

Thing about written fiction is you often get the character's thoughts, so well see what Dany was thinking one way or another.

I suspect the ending will be different in the books, otherwise the Azor Ahai storyline was a dead end.

Also: Jenny's Song? What was the point of that now?

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I didn't mind the direction things went or how they turned out because that is always going to work to some peoples favor or not. It is just we didn't have enough show to make it make a ton of sense in the last couple seasons, season 8 specifically badly. I mean the first seasons it was a massive adventure to just get from Kings Landing to Winterfell for Arya. In the last couple seasons she must have made similar trips multiple times in the length of between episodes. Which is where I think it went wrong. Early seasons that had source material had a lot of details and adventure between events and decisions. Once the source material ran out the great events and decisions continued but the details and adventure were lost along the way. Thus the ratio between "the why" and "the happening" got thrown out of wack and just kind of sputtered out even though it was among a ton of stuff happening.

[IIamaKing]

He has it all the way back in season one actually. You can see it when he saves Commander Mormont.

I thought so, I just didnt feel like finding evidence or being wrong if I were mistaken. Its pretty common for swordsmen to have a dirk or some such small blade. Thanks for doing the leg work!

[Marfrilau]

That's the thing. Here's Dany's chain of thought;

The world needs saving.
I'm the only one who can save it.
I need to sit the Iron Throne to do so, first.
My people must have a reason to support me completely, or I will face constant questioning and rebellion.
That support must come through either love, or fear.
The people of Westeros do not love me, they reject me.
Thus, to sit the throne, and use it to begin my conquest of the known world, the people of Westeros must fear me.
So I'll burn King's Landing to ashes to show what happens to those who refuse to bend the knee. The rest will fall in line.

She's making a sacrifice to further her greater goal. That "sacrifice" is the innocent lives in King's Landing. It still serves her goals, the same goals she has always had. That she has told people, time and again. They have not changed. Neither has Dany. It's just that, until recently, the people refusing to support her were even worse, so you overlooked her response. You tried to see it as a response to their specific villainy, when it was almost always about refusing to fall in line in support of her cause.

So when presented with targets, like the Tarlys or the people of King's Landing, who aren't overtly villainous, her strategy doesn't change, because it was never about that.


And before you cite times when she claimed it was about that, these kinds of leaders always have inspiring words. Hitler had inspiring, motivating speeches. They were bullshit, and you shouldn't have ever given them the blind faith you did.

One problem though. They surrendered. They were on the first step to bending the knee. However, is bending the knee even something civilians do? In any case she didn't show the world what happens if you refuse to bend the knee. She showed what happens if you surrender to her. You burn anyway. It's like if during the Tarly scene she would have burned the soldiers that bend the knee. It's nonsensical.

Quite a lot could be fixed if she just didn't burn people that had surrendered. The following episode would also have been better as the decision to kill her would have been much more "grey". It was so ridiculous I started laughing when Jon started to defend her (yes I know he loves his queen).

[Thekri]

I mean, I've said multiple times that the writing in the last couple seasons is way too rushed; they needed at least another season to properly fill this stuff out. I'm not arguing that "the writing was great", just that there was heaps of foreshadowing, and that Daenerys was really not presented as the Glorious Guardian of All That's Right and Good like some people claim she was. That foreshadowing and writing in the good seasons made it clear this wasn't the case, we needed a slower exposure of it at the end, not the rug-pull they gave us.

If you're arguing it was sloppy and cheap and forced, then we agree. If you're arguing it's contradicting her character arc and out of character for Daenerys, I'm gonna point out how that's really not the case.

But that is the exact point most people are trying to make to you. Yeah, some people are legitimately upset by what happened to their favorite character, but most of us are just disappointed in the amateurish way the show got there.

I am confident GRR Martin gave at least the following plot points:
Dany commits an atrocity.
Jon kills her for it.
Jon goes back to the wall at the end.
Brann Stark winds up on the iron throne.

He probably also gave the endstate for a few other character arcs, and likely also covered the Kingsmoot style of Government, and possibly the independence of the North (I kind of doubt it, because it clashes so hard with Brann as king).

However, the path that Martin intends to take to get there will be likely extremely different. For instance, the Iron Islands plotline is massively more developed in the books, and it is likely that is what drives Westeros into a system that is extremely similar to their system of government. However since the show didn't really do anything with the Greyjoy plotlines, they introduced it as a random idea Tyrion had when locked up that nobody objected too. So the book probably gets there in a logical way, and the show pulled it out of its ass in the last 15 minutes of the show.

Likewise Daenerys probably has a better arc, Bronn probably actually does some shit before becoming king (And has a defined purpose for doing so). It feels like D&D wanted all of these plot points to be secret to the last two episodes, but don't know how to do any sort of buildup.

[Celista]

Her song wasn’t a big deal in the novels. Why do you care about a line where some girl dances with ghosts? It’s a song, not a prophecy.

Well it was included in the credits for a reason, there were a lot of articles that speculated that it was alluding to something. I don't think it's irrational to have suspected that it was.

[Shadowferal]

Prophecy was a waste

[Zaktar]

Don't forget to most in the north, they thought Bran was dead and gone. Then suddenly shows up after svfew years and says he us the 3 eyed Raven. The north are supersticious I would bet many still don't trust him. Then you expect the rest of the kingdoms to accept him as king because he has stories. They would have been better off picking Gendry because " As a black Smith he knows what it takes to forge a strong Kingdom her DER her der"

At least Gendry had a claim. It's fair in a way though, they had ended up in an unusual position where the throne which had always been taken by force, had just been taken and was also lost in such a way that left no successor. So whatever they did was going to be unconventional. The boardroom picks the CEO method was fine, a good addition even.

But yeah, I don't get how Bran is this well known sympathetic figure to the people who chose him. My headcannon is that they all assumed they could control him, and took a "better him than my rival" approach to it. With a lot of fleshing out it could have made sense, it just wasn't =/

Edit: would have loved to have seen less moping and more Sansa politicking on Bran's behalf, covertly working with Tyrion to execute this plan. Even with the limited time they had, they could have done more. 5 minutes could have laid any groundwork whatsoever.

[Jayma]

Looking back on it

The lack of screen time for Cersei this season was absurd. D&D thinking 6 episodes would do these characters justice is a joke.

[Yunaqt]

Likewise Daenerys probably has a better arc, Bronn probably actually does some shit before becoming king(And has a defined purpose for doing so). It feels like D&D wanted all of these plot points to be secret to the last two episodes, but don't know how to do any sort of buildup.

Is this a future leak? Bronn kills Bran to take his wheelchair for himself, he really is the new LF.

[Thekri]

Is this a future leak? Bronn kills Bran to take his wheelchair for himself, he really is the new LF.

Touche, I mistyped. My personal theory is that it was supposed to be Rickon on the iron throne, but D&D killed him before they found that out.

[Sooba]

Neither were anyone else she killed. She's not big on asking for people to defend their actions, you'll note.

Patently false. Others were given a choice and forewarned of the consequence of their actions. Now it wasn't always fair, and certainly motivated by power with only little regard for their situation, but it there was always a chance to bow.

- - - Updated - - -

That's the thing. Here's Dany's chain of thought;

The world needs saving.
I'm the only one who can save it.
I need to sit the Iron Throne to do so, first.
My people must have a reason to support me completely, or I will face constant questioning and rebellion.
That support must come through either love, or fear.
The people of Westeros do not love me, they reject me.
Thus, to sit the throne, and use it to begin my conquest of the known world, the people of Westeros must fear me.
So I'll burn King's Landing to ashes to show what happens to those who refuse to bend the knee. The rest will fall in line.

/Snip .

Except King's Landing and all the soldiers in it were in the act of surrendering, which directly contradicts both your assertion that she had been rejected and your assertion that it's qualitatively the same as what came before. This isn't just a quantity thing. Her actions very much are different. This is aberrant behaviour, even for her. And it wasn't sufficiently set up. Even if she views the soldiers as "rejecting" her, they surrendered. And if she had followed her past actions, she would've then given them a choice. She never did. This goes doubly for the smallfolk of King's Landing who didn't display rejection at all, but cowered from the beginning.

[Jastall]

Wilding leader: where's Mance?
Jon: he's dead.
Wilding leader: how?
Jon: i shot an arrow thru his heart.

I think people are forgetting how Jon works.

Yeah, him turning himself in and explaining what happened is perfectly in character, even moreso because he's consumed with guilt and grief over what he did. Jon has been choosing his honor over reason for 8 seasons, can't start complaining about him doing that now.

What makes no sense at all is the Unsullied imprisoning the guy instead of executing him on the spot.

[Okacz]

Where did Jon even get a Sai? I've never seen a dagger like this on the entire show.

It's more like a Stiletto, those actually do fit the late medieval-ish setting of the series. As in "Where", I mean how hard would it be for a guy to get a decent dagger being a commander of an army and having a pro assassin for a sister?

[Yunaqt]

Touche, I mistyped. My personal theory is that it was supposed to be Rickon on the iron throne, but D&D killed him before they found that out.

Figured, but made me chuckle when I read it.

[Sooba]

Wilding leader: where's Mance?
Jon: he's dead.
Wilding leader: how?
Jon: i shot an arrow thru his heart.

I think people are forgetting how Jon works.

Any other way of explaining that situation makes Jon seem like he's weaseling out of his actions. By owning up to his actions, being willing to take the anger, and letting another wildling (Tormund) explain why, Jon actually manages to turn that into a non-issue. Being straight-up was about the only option he had, given that he would not have easily lied right there.

In short, I think you're being a bit too hard on him.

- - - Updated - - -

Touche, I mistyped. My personal theory is that it was supposed to be Rickon on the iron throne, but D&D killed him before they found that out.

I'd love for him to end up Lord of Winterfell. Alas, the name of his dog does not bode well for his survival.

[Frontenac]

I suspect the ending will be different in the books, otherwise the Azor Ahai storyline was a dead end.

Also: Jenny's Song? What was the point of that now?

"Gorghan of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with the pleasure of it and think, how sweet, how fine, how good this is... and then her teeth snap shut and your moans turn to screams. That is the nature of prophecy, said Gorghan. Prophecy will bite your prick off every time."

- Marwyn the Mage, A Feast for Crows

[Minikin]

Ok, then please explain to me why even after the Starbucks coffee cup incident, they still didn't learn a damn thing, and there's water bottles now on the set. This whole season seemed rushed.

It's all those hours filming at night!!!! Can't see the bottles in the dark!