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

[Beazy]

I think that's the biggest complaint I've heard/seen - that the last two seasons were rushed. I'm not sure 10 seasons would have been called for, but at least seasons 7 & 8 having a full 10 episodes. Keep in mind D&D had no published material to work from - they had the notes from GRRM but nothing like the rich base of material that came from the books.

I agree with you that it was fantastic how it played out, and who wouldn't want more of that - right?

It just upsets me because I have this sinking feeling Martin is never finishing the last two books and I feel like the show just gave us the cliff notes version.

I want the details and I'm pretty sure we're never getting them. /cry

[cubby]

It just upsets me because I have this sinking feeling Martin is never finishing the last two books and I feel like the show just gave us the cliff notes version.

I want the details and I'm pretty sure we're never getting them. /cry

Even having not read a single one of the books, I could not agree more with your sentiment. GRRM absolutely fucking killed it with this series, even unfinished, and it took the world by storm. I hope he does finish them, but it's highly doubtful. He's currently working on at least three other projects right now, and swimming in fame and fortune. All of which he richly deserves.

[Witchblade77]

good writing is when you read back and realize all the hints you missed towards the big twist. bad writing is when the twist comes out of nowhere because... something something subverting expectations?

now. you can like or not like something - opinions are subjective after all, but there are things in a last season especially that are just...terrible, period. Dani somehow forgot about the fleet they were just discussing? Dothraki is let out of the safety of the walls to attack the wights in a DARK (becasue fuck lighting the trenches in advance) BEFORE the night kings army is thinned out, so that they can be slaughtered and allow night king to beef up his army? hiding your weakest in a CRYPTS??? how the heck all these people with strategic planning experience not look at the battle plan and said.. wait this is going to cause too many casualties and may lose us the battle? oh and apparently they were slaughtered, but then they weren't because they all magically reappear and multiply for Dany's nazi rally.

characters are hit with a dumb bat, because plot demands. Dany going mad could have happened and could have been the end game after all, but last season doesn't build it up, and no the rest of the show doesn't build it up either, on the contrary while it builds her up as ruthless, it also very deliberately across MULTIPLE occasions - shows her taking great pains to defend the innocents, to minimize casualties to the innocents. and then like the switch flip and she just chases them through the streets because reasons? Drogon suddenly speaking in metaphors and burning the throne because... reasons? not the person who killed Dany, no the thrown because he is suddenly metaphor enabled. ever changing power of the scorpions. one moment they are slow to load, slow to shoot, then they are so precise as to hit dead center TWICE on a MOVING target, and then once again they are useless because plot demands.

the reason why the show went so downhill and it absolutely DID go downhill is not because they "changed the book plots" but rather because they switched from character driven story to a story driven by plot they wanted to tell and "awesome moments" they wanted to show regardless of what it does to the characterization or the internal logic of the world the characters exist in. it made characters feel like marionettes rather then people.

[Varodoc]

Good writing is when you want to rewatch something after it's over, especially when you're in the middle of lockdown.

Bad writing is when you don't want to rewatch something after it's over because you realize that already the first scene set up a waste of time (White Walkers).

[jackofwind]

Even having not read a single one of the books, I could not agree more with your sentiment. GRRM absolutely fucking killed it with this series, even unfinished, and it took the world by storm. I hope he does finish them, but it's highly doubtful. He's currently working on at least three other projects right now, and swimming in fame and fortune. All of which he richly deserves.

Honestly though, he's generally acknowledged as being nowhere near the top of modern fantasy authorship anymore. He's just the easy-to-get-into gateway that non-fantasy readers flocked to.

Brandon Sanderson and Stephen Erikson alone have vastly out-written him and made his twists look positively tropey, and his world-building and politics look tiny and insignificant.

[Twdft]

Dany going mad could have happened and could have been the end game after all, but last season doesn't build it up, and no the rest of the show doesn't build it up either, on the contrary while it builds her up as ruthless, it also very deliberately across MULTIPLE occasions - shows her taking great pains to defend the innocents, to minimize casualties to the innocents. and then like the switch flip and she just chases them through the streets because reasons?

Dany burned her first victim to death in season 1. And more and more over the seasons. Yes she tried to protect the innocents, but she had no problem at all killing people she decided had it coming. Her burning an entire city was built up since the very beginning.

Later seasons were rushed and felt off because D&D had little source material anymore and knew they wouldn't get any fast enough. So they switched from story to action.

The reason most people liked GoT wasn't the action but the stories of how the big world developments effected single people and their decisions. And how those decisions effected other people and how they dealt with it. The big action scenes in 7+8 were very well done, but if I wanted that I'd watch a summer blockbuster. That's not what got us hooked to GoT.

[cubby]

Good writing is when you want to rewatch something after it's over, especially when you're in the middle of lockdown.

Bad writing is when you don't want to rewatch something after it's over because you realize that already the first scene set up a waste of time (White Walkers).

To each there own I guess.

I'm currently rewatching the entire series, and knowing the ending, it's fantastic. Little quips that have deep, long lasting meaning, become epic in their impending doom. For instance, there is an argument in the Weirwood area in Winterfell, and Maester Luwin says to Theon and Jon, "we will not have a battle in the Weirwood [area]", which is just delicious, because of course the pinnacle Night King fight ends up being right there.

You can claim "bad writing" all you want, but your reasons for doing so are hollow. Good writing in one episode doesn't change when another episode is revealed. You're talking about plot development.

[Varodoc]

To each there own I guess.

I'm currently rewatching the entire series, and knowing the ending, it's fantastic. Little quips that have deep, long lasting meaning, become epic in their impending doom. For instance, there is an argument in the Weirwood area in Winterfell, and Maester Luwin says to Theon and Jon, "we will not have a battle in the Weirwood [area]", which is just delicious, because of course the pinnacle Night King fight ends up being right there.

1) GRRM didn't even invent the Night King so he certainly didn't have him in mind when he had Maester Luwin say that line, don't make me laugh.

2) There wasn't even a fight with the Night King There was Arya screaming like a mongoloid and surviving because the Night King forgot how to choke people.

You can claim "bad writing" all you want, but your reasons for doing so are hollow. Good writing in one episode doesn't change when another episode is revealed. You're talking about plot development.

What you said makes no sense. Episodes don't exist in a vacuum.

[cubby]

Dany burned her first victim to death in season 1. And more and more over the seasons. Yes she tried to protect the innocents, but she had no problem at all killing people she decided had it coming. Her burning an entire city was built up since the very beginning.

Later seasons were rushed and felt off because D&D had little source material anymore and knew they wouldn't get any fast enough. So they switched from story to action.

The reason most people liked GoT wasn't the action but the stories of how the big world developments effected single people and their decisions. And how those decisions effected other people and how they dealt with it. The big action scenes in 7+8 were very well done, but if I wanted that I'd watch a summer blockbuster. That's not what got us hooked to GoT.

I agree - her madness was well documented, built up over time, and was even capitulated with her dual-role of "saving the innocents" while at the same time burning people alive, as her mad-king father did. And people forget that Dany burned her first victim alive at the end of season 1 - the witch who killed her Khal.

There certainly was a switch from slow building up to great action scenes to a more blockbuster feel, I like how you phrased that. I agree, too, that the "rushed" feeling came from a lack of original source material. The world building and slow character development (in a good way) was what attracted us to GoT in the first place. I mean, in Season 1 alone there are two major battle scenes, both of which aren't shown (including the huge game changer where Jaime is captured).

[jackofwind]

To each there own I guess.

I'm currently rewatching the entire series, and knowing the ending, it's fantastic. Little quips that have deep, long lasting meaning, become epic in their impending doom. For instance, there is an argument in the Weirwood area in Winterfell, and Maester Luwin says to Theon and Jon, "we will not have a battle in the Weirwood [area]", which is just delicious, because of course the pinnacle Night King fight ends up being right there.

You can claim "bad writing" all you want, but your reasons for doing so are hollow. Good writing in one episode doesn't change when another episode is revealed. You're talking about plot development.

That's like highschool English class levels of obvious foreshadowing, I wouldn't point to it to support your argument of "good writing".

Also, considering the close following of the first seasons to the books and that dialogue being pulled from there, but the Night King being 100% invented for the show and not present in the books, it's really not good writing at all - it's just D&D having invented something and tied it back to an inconsequent piece of dialogue from the early show.

[cubby]

1) GRRM didn't even invent the Night King so he certainly didn't have him in mind when he had Maester Luwin say that line, don't make me laugh.

What you said makes no sense.

I think you answered yourself accurately. Let me know if you have questions.

2) There wasn't even a fight with the Night King There was Arya screaming like a mongoloid and surviving because the Night King forgot how to choke people.

You don't have to make things up just because you don't like it. Just say you don't like it and leave it at that. Or did you miss the part where Theon literally fought the Night King?

What you said makes no sense. Episodes don't exist in a vacuum.

Actually, what you just said above makes no sense - because no one but you said it. You're arguing against yourself, because I sure as shit didn't say episodes exist in a vaccum. What I said was that the writing quality of one episode doesn't change because of later episodes. The impression of that early episode does change, however, because of later episodes, and that's because of plot development, not writing. You're going to argue that those are the same, but they are not.

- - - Updated - - -

That's like highschool English class levels of obvious foreshadowing, I wouldn't point to it to support your argument of "good writing".

Hell, it could even just be me reading more into it than was intended. But if it was truly foreshadowing, you're 100% wrong. Pointing at something in Season 1 of a series that doesn't happen until Season 8 is fantastic.

Also, considering the close following of the first seasons to the books and that dialogue being pulled from there, but the Night King being 100% invented for the show and not present in the books, it's really not good writing at all - it's just D&D having invented something and tied it back to an inconsequent piece of dialogue from the early show.

You don't know that the NK was 100% invented by D&D. The NK could show in the second-to-last book, still unpublished, and GRRM told D&D he was coming up. Isn't something like the NK hinted at in earlier books, even if not revealed?

[Zaktar]

To each there own I guess.

I'm currently rewatching the entire series, and knowing the ending, it's fantastic. Little quips that have deep, long lasting meaning, become epic in their impending doom. For instance, there is an argument in the Weirwood area in Winterfell, and Maester Luwin says to Theon and Jon, "we will not have a battle in the Weirwood [area]", which is just delicious, because of course the pinnacle Night King fight ends up being right there.

You can claim "bad writing" all you want, but your reasons for doing so are hollow. Good writing in one episode doesn't change when another episode is revealed. You're talking about plot development.

It's interesting that you're so aggressively defending those seasons without having caught up to them in your rewatch.

I get what you're saying, that a lot of the moments in the end resonate with things happening early on in the story. That aspect is a sign of good writing, but personally I suspect most of them are there because Martin had a general idea of where the story was going and shared some of those resolutions. To me the writing got very sloppy as characters made awkward decisions meant to suit the plot. The most memorable example to me was storing all the important helpless people in a crypt to prepare for the assault from the guy who raises the dead. Suddenly a number of characters had awful memory or judgement lapses. Every episode had several examples of this by the end, it went from this smoothly flowing organic feeling story to a herky-jerky wrap-up. Most of the stuff people hated made sense in the context of the earlier seasons, but that wasn't the problem, the problem was that the story took these huge vaulting leaps to put the characters in the right position for the ending. It felt like they skipped a season or two, you could almost see the strings the writers were using to move characters around.

It's all opinion in the end of the day of course. I'd be very surprised if there is a broad change in opinion on this series though, I suspect it's going to be one of those things that was a huge phenomenon which is almost immediately forgotten.

[Dracullus]

Overall main plot points in season 8 imo were great - dealing with Others before final game of thrones, Arya with killing blow, Dany going mad, Bran on throne and few others. In this area it was far better than season 7 that felt like complete mess (also with few plot points that felt necessary - Arya dealing with Freys, Wall falling, Littlefinger killed by young Starks).

It's execution, details, (almost) completely lack of building up characters, sometimes even changing them for no reason (Jaimie) and often just bad written dialogue made that finale horrible. It makes me think that all good written stuff are just bullet points from Martin. Which make me even more pissed, because most likely we just get expensive spoiler of books that we won't read next ??? years (pointless to make any prediction at this point).

Of course I'm talking only about writing here. Acting (although it's similar to Star Wars ep. 3 - good actors with often really bad lines) and cinematography (ep. 3 and 5 looked amazing). Which, again, make me think what seasons 5-8 could be.

Imo core of problem are not even D&D, but Martin selling rights years before he finished his books. Game of Thrones was amazing show while creators had access to full picture of some segment of story and could cut material without breaking whole thing and add scenes that were offscreen in book (because it's POV nature).

And it's not like I'm sure books will be good either, it's madness that 5/7 came out 10 years ago, something clearly isn't working there.

[jackofwind]

Hell, it could even just be me reading more into it than was intended. But if it was truly foreshadowing, you're 100% wrong. Pointing at something in Season 1 of a series that doesn't happen until Season 8 is fantastic.

Except they didn't plan it, they backtracked and post-rationalized it. It was a throwaway line in Season 1 that got reworked to having more meaning in Season 8. Good writing in Season 8? Perhaps, I disagree though. Good writing in Season 1? No, because it wasn't planned out.

You don't know that the NK was 100% invented by D&D. The NK could show in the second-to-last book, still unpublished, and GRRM told D&D he was coming up. Isn't something like the NK hinted at in earlier books, even if not revealed?

GRRM has been asked about the Night King, and provided this answer: "As for the Night's King (the form I prefer), in the books he is a legendary figure, akin to Lann the Clever and Brandon the Builder, and no more likely to have survived to the present day than they have."

GRRM wrote a legend into the books that is completely different from the Night King presented in the show, who is a WW (allegedly the original WW), having existed since the age of the First Men. They're inherently completely different characters who literally cannot both be the same figure. Them having a similar name is no different than the other naming bullshit D&D pulled to simplify the storyline, like forgetting that Rhaegar already had a son named Aegon.

(Night's King: Per the legend in the novels, he was a Night's Watch Commander who allegedly married a White Walker and went rogue, committing atrocities until he was killed.)

[Adamas102]

When they ran out of material? They had all the existing material possible, including input from GRRM post-published books, as well as the literal ending. You're saying shocking moments that happened are ok so long as they happened in the books, but once there weren't books to pull from, any shocking moments were bad. That's a little disingenuous. What shocking events or "turns" did you feel were unjustified or unearned?

Yeah, they ran out of source material. It's a very generous belief that GRRM gave them every major detail from the end of the books through the end of the story. He gave them an outline apparently. What we DO know is that GRRM's role as a consultant on the show was greatly diminished around the time when they passed the book material, and given what D&D said about how they decided on Arya being the NK killer I have to assume they either weren't given many details at all or just completely ignored many of Martin's notes.

It seems you also COMPLETELY misunderstood what I said about shock moments. It has nothing to do with whether they happen in the books, it's about how they fit into the narrative and style of the author. Like I said, all the book shocks were firmly grounded in the setting, they weren't literary tropes to fool the audience with "gotcha!" moments. Things like the Red Wedding were inspired by actual events, things that happen in a world of brutal politics. They were shocking to see on screen because audiences are generally not used to seeing characters they think are safe being killed off, much less with such underhanded tactics.

"You thought THIS character would do this, but we instead had THIS OTHER CHARACTER do it instead" is not the GRRM's style. That sort of audience manipulation is not how the books are written. One of the biggest shocks of my non-book reading friends was seeing Rob Stark killed because the show made him out to be a main character. However, in the books he's the only one of the Stark children to not be a POV character (not including Rickon because he's a toddler).

She certainly was built up as a badass assassin in the series. Remember her list of people she intended to kill? And you're forgetting to mention the people she killed while training with the Faceless Men. The build up of her badassness is solid in the series, at least to those of us who didn't read the books. You might be comparing the two and thinking the series wasn't enough, but I'm here to tell you it was - her path to assassin was well documented, and slowly built up, over years.

The show played her up more because they had to collapse story lines to fit it into an already long series. That's understandable when each book is it's own tome of 800+ pages, an almost impossible length to bring to bear in a series, even if each book is a 10 series chapters (and I love long books, don't get me wrong - this isn't a criticism of length, just a reminder that things almost had to get cut given the volume of material GRRM gave us). IIRC, she took on a couple of events to make the storyline more cohesive, give one character more depth rather than bring in yet another character to build up when there wasn't time to do so.

And frankly, the Fray slaughter was absolutely fantastic opening, and perfectly justified given her Faceless abilities.

And we are given an indication that she can approach a target stealthily, when she was blind and could operate in the dark, during her final test for the Faceless Men. And she showcased the move that killed the NK to Brienne when they sparred.

I too enjoyed the character Arya - although she wasn't even close to my favorite. IMO her characters turn to badass assassin was completely justified, almost from the beginning, even in the first season, she was being built up as a killer - a warrior of sorts (practicing sword fighting with the Dancing Master for instance, or shooting a bow in Winterfell). Taking sword lessons, killing someone at such a young age, and standing up for herself even as she was being dragged to Castle Black after watching her father beheaded. You're saying she was playing the traumatized child - but she really wasn't, ever - outside her watching her father die.

All the pieces are there to justify each main character's ending, and I completely understand that some people weren't happy with the ending (or in particular some character's ending), but from a "I only watched the series and didn't read the books" the ending was terrific. Each main character was true to themselves up until the very end.

This is all projection based on expectations on what an assassin should be more so than how the character is written. Arya was shown to be a tomboy, not a killer in training. More importantly, Arya is NOT A HERO. Her trauma is almost constant from when she sees her father killed, to all the war crimes and atrocities she sees committed by the Mountain and his men, to her time with the Hound, and all the way to her time in Braavos where she is groomed to be an assassin. The show did handle her change from a rambunctious child to a callous sociopath who dreams of murder every night pretty well for the first several seasons, but that all changed once the show passed the book point. By the end of the show they've made her into a "cool" character with "cool" murder moments interspersed with her joking around with her siblings. They took what was a tragic character and turned her into "super cool ninja assassin".

While it's obviously not the fault of the show, it also doesn't help that Maisie Williams quickly outgrew the role of Arya. By the time the book material ended, show Arya is a good 5 years older than book Arya. We also have to assume that they intentionally played into that, otherwise her sex scene with Gendry would be pretty awkward (since book Arya would probably be between the ages of 12-13 at that point). The idea that an 11 year old is so consumed with vengeance and killing (and is literally doing murder for hire) isn't meant to transition into her being the vanquisher of supernatural beings.

There's also the discrepancy between her training and what she ends up being capable of. The Faceless Men are not super ninjas that hide in shadows and go stabby stabby. Jaqen has one kill in the show that he does differently in the books where he uses a poison dart, but for the most part the Faceless Men are meant to make their kills look like accidents. In the books, his second kill is instead having an otherwise loyal dog maul it's owner (and we're never told how he does so). Arya's kill as part of her training with the Faceless Men is simply planting a poisoned coin with a merchant because she had stalked him and knew he bit all his coins to make sure they were real gold. THAT'S what Faceless Men do. I guess D&D didn't feel like being that clever. Dropping a dagger and catching it is so fucking mundane it's almost insulting that people point to that and say "see? that's her super awesome assassin training".

Book Arya (and show Arya until about season 5) is a broken character who has witnessed countless awful events that have robbed her of her innocence. She uses her wits to survive, pretending to be a boy and latching onto stronger characters who will protect her. Murder has been normalized for her and it's all she thinks about (even when she's dreaming through the eyes of her dire wolf). She kills people she doesn't even know, and murders several people just out of spite. She cheats to pass parts of her training, and more than likely abandons it partway through like she does in the show. This is what Arya was like until D&D had full reign over her character development and decided "well, she's super popular with the fans so lets just make her into a cool ninja assassin". They truly ruined what was a good, interesting, tragic character.

[Twdft]

Imo core of problem are not even D&D, but Martin selling rights years before he finished his books.

Just imagine HBO stopping after season 5 and telling us you'll get another 5 seasons when all books are finished even if that takes another 15 years (A Game of Thrones was published in 1996).

[Witchblade77]

Dany burned her first victim to death in season 1. And more and more over the seasons. Yes she tried to protect the innocents, but she had no problem at all killing people she decided had it coming. Her burning an entire city was built up since the very beginning.

Later seasons were rushed and felt off because D&D had little source material anymore and knew they wouldn't get any fast enough. So they switched from story to action.

The reason most people liked GoT wasn't the action but the stories of how the big world developments effected single people and their decisions. And how those decisions effected other people and how they dealt with it. The big action scenes in 7+8 were very well done, but if I wanted that I'd watch a summer blockbuster. That's not what got us hooked to GoT.

I have acknowledged that she was ruthless. Dany burning her enemies was in character. Dany burning random citizens of the city who were oppressed by her enemy? the very kind of people she habitually tried to rescue? is NOT. they did NOT build up to it. they could have, had they taken the time. but they didn't build up to it, they just flipped the switch and it feels unearned.

and that is the problem that I was talking about D&D wanted action scenes. they wanted cool looking shit. and so they ignored everything else and turned character based story into Michael Bay movie, complete with action being hard to see half the time.

[cubby]

It's interesting that you're so aggressively defending those seasons without having caught up to them in your rewatch.

Because the last two seasons are fresh in my mind whereas the first 4-5 I haven't seen in years. Rewatching the series for me cements the quality of the ending overall. Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying here though.

I get what you're saying, that a lot of the moments in the end resonate with things happening early on in the story. That aspect is a sign of good writing, but personally I suspect most of them are there because Martin had a general idea of where the story was going and shared some of those resolutions.

I see that as being true to the characters overall. I can see what you mean though, that Martin told D&D the "outline" of the ending, and they had to essentially write the last two books in detail to play out the end, because Martin was never going to finish them himself before the series ended.

To me the writing got very sloppy as characters made awkward decisions meant to suit the plot. The most memorable example to me was storing all the important helpless people in a crypt to prepare for the assault from the guy who raises the dead.

I don't see anything wrong with that scene, because the NK can only raise those dead that he's killed, not any dead. That point is made abundantly clear earlier in the series, when one of the White Walkers is killed, and his "dead" collapse with him.

Suddenly a number of characters had awful memory or judgement lapses. Every episode had several examples of this by the end, it went from this smoothly flowing organic feeling story to a herky-jerky wrap-up. Most of the stuff people hated made sense in the context of the earlier seasons, but that wasn't the problem, the problem was that the story took these huge vaulting leaps to put the characters in the right position for the ending. It felt like they skipped a season or two, you could almost see the strings the writers were using to move characters around.

Can you provide some other examples? I don't think your crypt one was a really solid example, given what I said. I could be misunderstanding you, however, so please clarify if I missed something.

It's all opinion in the end of the day of course. I'd be very surprised if there is a broad change in opinion on this series though, I suspect it's going to be one of those things that was a huge phenomenon which is almost immediately forgotten.

Agreed - people certainly aren't going to change their minds. I would respectfully disagree regarding your conclusion of the series - it's now 2+ years over and everyone is still saying "the next Game of Thrones" when major series are announced. Or studios are looking for "the next GoT". Immediately forgotten isn't even remotely in the books, and as a perfect example, we're literally still talking about it, two years later.

[Witchblade77]

on wights... there is no such prerequisite for night king to have killed the people in order to raise them as wights. he needs to kill people to make more night walkers. his officers so to speak. but cannon fodder army? they just need to be dead and in range. doesn't even matter how long they were dead. and people in the story KNEW that - the wight that was brought in to show to Cercei is almost entirely decomposed... and weights do NOT decompose any further once they are reanimated, this TOO is something we are shown

and STILL they hid in crypts. Jon was there, Jon knew all of the above, and yet... and predicably... all the dead in the crypts WERE ressurected by night king, so there goes THAT theory of night walkers having to be the ones to kill people in order to ressurect them....

this was the biggest problem with last seasons. D&D forgetting the very rules they have themselves set up in order to push through cool looking moments. kinda like Dany forgetting all about the fleet, even though they have literally been discussing its location before she heads out.


its not even lack of book material issue. they have changed PLENTY from the books early on, in part to actualy make it filmable, cause they books have a lot more to keep track of. and it worked still, very well. it stopped working when they stopped caring about finishing the story properly and just wanted to get it over with so that they could go on to work on star wars.

[Easo]

Cubby, this might be circumstantial but after last leason it only took like barely couple of months and GoT posts basically disappeared, no memes, etc. It pretty much died, people forgot it (and a lot intentionally) due to the stupid shit that was the last season (S7 was also... problematic... but could be worked with). Some other obscure stuff still kees appearing, GoT? Basically gone. Those videos with actors doing interviews about the last season alone told everything anyone needed to know, you could see how people tried to answer in a polite way about a pile of crap.