Game of Thrones

[BishopsJuice91]

They've been going off the books for a while now. If I recall correctly, the last book published so far ends with Daenarys being dropped in a grass field by Drogon after he rescues her from the fighting pits, only to be surrounded by Dothraki. That was at least 2 seasons ago I think. Of course GRRM had some chapters of the next book that he publicly read here and there but as far as I know they did not contain major plot points for the main characters.

Actually I think they did a really good job when they went past the books, would have expected much worse. I can understand the complaints about the season feeling rushed, but Dany going bat-sh*t crazy was not really a surprise. They could have used some time in the first two episodes to build that up a bit more. That way, Jon's realisation and action would have had more weight to it.

But that's the problem with such shows: everybody has a different ending in mind and you can only pick one, so lots of people will be disappointed. But hey, they gave us 8 years of what is - all in all - one of the greatest shows we ever got. So I am not upset

Her decent was a surprise to me, I understood why she did what she did but going completely insane was surprising and I felt let down by the way she was handled. I still feel like some things should’ve been altered when it was realized they would only have so many episodes this season. Anything could’ve been fixed in this last episode but instead they chose to leave stains on characters people have loved for years and it’s over so there’s nothing left, I don’t think that’s cool...

[brettc1]

Yes there is if that rabid dog is your queen. It's just that "honor" and "moral" are not the same thing. Honor is a largely archaic system of conduct. There's a reason why honor is usually given to morally ambiguous characters like Klingons and Orcs in fiction. "Modern morality is superior to honor" is largely the message of most encounters between people espousing modern morality and those espousing honor.

No, there isn’t. The problem is when idiots put their personal “honor” above what is actually honorable. Saying it’s honorable to let innocent children die scream in and burning is just stupid.

If the writers expected people would make Ann afford to understand why a character burned hundreds of innocent little boys and girls to death, they were sadly mistaken.

[brettc1]

Everybody has a right to be disappointed if that's how they feel. But this is a mischaracterization of what happened with Dany. "They," that is the writers, didn't change anything about Dany or her behavior. They simply recontextualized it to make everyone realize that this is what she has been ALL ALONG.

We can debate how effective their attempt was. But the idea is for the audience to be in the same position as Jon. We love Dany. We've seen her triumph over evil men, and resist terrible fates and fight for what was hers. And we cheered, even as she engaged in savage, sometimes indiscriminate violence against her enemies. Because she could and she believed it was right to do so.

When she was targeting the evil we wrote it off. Justified it.

YOU might have. I never did. Nor did Ser Barristan or Tyrion.

We're supposed to feel conflicted.

Nope.

Unsure if it is our eyes or our hearts that are deceiving us. What Jon does, probably save the world from tyranny, isn't meant to feel clean or righteous.

Again, maybe not to you. For me it’s the Vader principle. You kill innocent kids for your own selfish ends, you’re a sick monster. No sympathy. None.

I feel like the writers didn't quite stick the landing. But they got closer than I would have expected given the time constraint of six episodes. Rushed? Yes, absolutely. Not what we expected? Almost certainly. But thematically and visually strong, if narratively weaker.

Couldn’t have been any weaker if they had force fed it Valium laced with Kryptonite.

[Gorthon616]

But that's the problem with such shows: everybody has a different ending in mind and you can only pick one, so lots of people will be disappointed. But hey, they gave us 8 years of what is - all in all - one of the greatest shows we ever got. So I am not upset

TBH, I think the ending is poor enough that it falls out of the range of "one of the greatest shows." Maybe if you're just into fantasy/medieval stuff in general, sure. But otherwise, it is an average show that is only notable when it throws around it's budget.

[brettc1]

TBH, I think the ending is poor enough that it falls out of the range of "one of the greatest shows." Maybe if you're just into fantasy/medieval stuff in general, sure. But otherwise, it is an average show that is only notable when it throws around it's budget.

final creds FINISH.jpg

10 characters

[Starter Set]

Well yeah if you take the view that Ned Stark was am idiot and a loser.

He was surprisingly naive for someone of his age and experience though.

But anyway, i'm really not quite as sure as some here seem to be that Martin is going to deliver the same ending that the show.

Lot of time is going to pass between now and the release of the book, lot of things may change.

[Foxy]

TBH, I think the ending is poor enough that it falls out of the range of "one of the greatest shows." Maybe if you're just into fantasy/medieval stuff in general, sure. But otherwise, it is an average show that is only notable when it throws around it's budget.

Of course whether it is one of the greatest shows or not comes down to personal taste. To me, the ending was so bad that it took down the show as a whole. I think the show's endings could have never lived up to the enormous expectations people had.

In the end, it's just a TV show and I at least was thoroughly entertained. Would I have done things differently? 100% sure. But I wasn't in charge

[Andru]

I gave it some thought, and overall, I am happy with the finale.

My only real problem, like many others, is the pace these last 2 seasons was so quick. Development & character were thrown to the side just to reach certain plot points.

If these last 2 seasons were fleshed out more and had time to breathe, I think Dany's turn to the dark side could have been awesome.

This last season will not sour my appreciation for the show. While I don't agree with how everything was handled, there were so many cool moments, scenes, & overall spectacle, that GOT will still be one of my all time favorite shows.

[Sparta]

GRRM still has a lot to cover in just 2 books. Status is that Jon's still "dead" in Castle Black, Dany still has to deal with Meereen, Tyrion and Jorah are slaves/entertainers, Tommen is still king, Arya in Braavos, Lady Stoneheart, Cersei's walk of atonement...and then there's Aegon (Rhaegar and Elia's son) about to take Storm's End with the Golden Company.

With Sansa still at the Vale, I doubt she'll be sold to the Boltons, they've done that with Jeyne Poole already. Stannis is marching south to Winterfell with some Northern houses on his side (and Freefolk I think? Mance is Ramsay's prisoner), might be a different outcome, I felt that 'Battle of the Bastards' in the show was a bit too "Hollywood" for GRRM's writing, would be interesting to see how this'll play out and if a resurrected Jon would take part. But still in just 2 books, lots of material left, Dany going to Westeros, the Long Night, Mad Queen Dany...

[MichaelC]

[MindofShadow]

How will it all end? I hear people asking. The same ending as the show? Different?

Well… yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes.

I am working in a very different medium than David and Dan, never forget. They had six hours for this final season. I expect these last two books of mine will fill 3000 manuscript pages between them before I’m done… and if more pages and chapters and scenes are needed, I’ll add them. And of course the butterfly effect will be at work as well; those of you who follow this Not A Blog will know that I’ve been talking about that since season one. There are characters who never made it onto the screen at all, and others who died in the show but still live in the books… so if nothing else, the readers will learn what happened to Jeyne Poole, Lady Stoneheart, Penny and her pig, Skahaz Shavepate, Arianne Martell, Darkstar, Victarion Greyjoy, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Aegon VI, and a myriad of other characters both great and small that viewers of the show never had the chance to meet. And yes, there will be unicorns… of a sort…

Book or show, which will be the “real” ending? It’s a silly question. How many children did Scarlett O’Hara have?

How about this? I’ll write it. You read it. Then everyone can make up their own mind, and argue about it on the internet.

also relevant...

And me? I’m still here, and I’m still busy. As a producer, I’ve got five shows in development at HBO (some having nothing whatsoever to do with the world of Westeros), two at Hulu, one on the History Channel. I’m involved with a number of feature projects, some based upon my own stories and books, some on material created by others. There are these short films I am hoping to make, adaptations of classic stories by one of the most brilliant, quirky, and original writers our genre has ever produced. I’ve consulted on a video game out of Japan. And then there’s Meow Wolf…

Those books ian't getting done lol

[brettc1]

GRRM still has a lot to cover in just 2 books. Status is that Jon's still "dead" in Castle Black, Dany still has to deal with Meereen, Tyrion and Jorah are slaves/entertainers, Tommen is still king, Arya in Braavos, Lady Stoneheart, Cersei's walk of atonement...and then there's Aegon (Rhaegar and Elia's son) about to take Storm's End with the Golden Company.

With Sansa still at the Vale, I doubt she'll be sold to the Boltons, they've done that with Jeyne Poole already. Stannis is marching south to Winterfell with some Northern houses on his side (and Freefolk I think? Mance is Ramsay's prisoner), might be a different outcome, I felt that 'Battle of the Bastards' in the show was a bit too "Hollywood" for GRRM's writing, would be interesting to see how this'll play out and if a resurrected Jon would take part. But still in just 2 books, lots of material left, Dany going to Westeros, the Long Night, Mad Queen Dany...

GRRM makes each volume as long as the whole Lord of the Rings, so I am not too worried. He covered a massive amount in A Dance of Dragons.

Also spoilers:

in the books Dany and presumable Jon are not the only surviving Targaryens. Rhaegar's young son also apparently survived the massacre at Kings Landing, was smuggled to Essos, and has now returned to Westeros at Storm's End - with, I think, the Golden Company? So that means there will be three of them - one for each dragon, which seems to be what GRRM intended from the outset

end of spoilers

[remydat]

He came back to life because he was needed. No one else could have united everyone against the dead the way Jon did. Despite not killing the NK he was still the most important person there. And he saved Westeros from Dany on top of that. So he basically saved the world twice.

Dany probably doesnt need saving if Jon stayed dead. It was his stupidity in wanting to convince Cersei that lead to Viserion being killed and his stupidity in telling Sansa that led to the betrayals that helped break Dany.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Here's the problem. If you, as the writer, have not sufficiently prepped your audience for this kind of reversal, you can't blame the viewers for being upset.

And clearly for many MANY viewers that's what happened. Tyrions speech harking back to her previous purges attempt to highlight them as significant, but it's still too little too late for a lot of people.

Because, quite simply, it is a VERY long now to date going from killing guys who've said they're going to rape you to death with their horses to burning children alive. Her actions in Slavers Bay were perceived as teaching her wisdom and temperance. Clearly an epic fail not forseen by viewers. On the context of her reaction to SM learning she buned his father and brother, this is very much at odds with expectations.

Personally, if they were going this route it should have been Jorah who ended her. That would have had much more impact.

If many viewers saw it coming it was setup properly.

Even if others didn’t, you can’t say it wasn’t there. You did watch a whole 7 seasons where this particular character had been threatening to do exactly that many times. Not just once in passing. It was there for you. Just like all her killings and brutality even when it wasn’t necessary or merited. You can choose to ignore it or justify it, but it was there.

Even your slavery Bay comment..... literally the very last season she was there in one of the last episodes she had to be talked down from burning everything by Tyrion. The next season she was executing prisoners who didn’t kneel and had to be talked down from burning King’s Landing. So if Slavers Bay was teaching moment for her, it completely failed.

The desire was always part of her, the brutality was always there. It was set up. Fans saw it. A lot of the fans who didn’t see it have to ignore her own stated intentions and justify her cruelty over the course of the show.

[remydat]

You can't choose to apply a non-2019 moral at one point and then do so at another. In many a civilization, owning slaves was not evil, it just was. Even the Valyrian Freehold had slaves as recently as its Doom, 400 years ago. And in the last episode, the lords of Westeros drew equivalencies between commoners, pigs and horses. Yet there hasn't been much outrage about it. Daenerys herself was perfectly fine with owning slaves when she was in a position of power thanks to Drogo, or when living in the Free Cities. Therefore, there is an argument which can be made about the peoples of King's Landing being dubbed corrupt and evil by Dany : she holds the Dragon, she has the power to do so, and she decided that her right to rule -threatened or even erased by Jon, who had the better claim - could only be staked on Drogon and its powers. Hence why she unleashed it, to remind everyone how powerful she was. And as someone with a Messiah complex, it's very easy to decide that those who don't rise in revolt against their masters when one approach are corrupt and undeserving of one's gift. History is full of those peoples, I'm pretty sure of it.

And while the lords of Slaver's Bay certainly were terrible individuals by our values, did they truly deserves to have their whole civilization destroyed by a foreign invader who obfuscated her tue intentions behind the pretense of ending slavery ? If Dany truly had wanted to change the world for the better, why did she needed the Iron Throne ? As queen of Slaver's Bay, she would have had far more impact on ensuring that slavery would be erased than as Queen of Westeros. And how do we know that it wasn't reinstated in Meereen, Yunkaï and Astapor as soon as the last of her ship crossed over the horizon ? She left mercenaries, peoples as liable as pillaging the cities and then selling their swords to the higher bidder.

At best she left Slaver's Bay to fall back in its previous nature. At worst, she has sentenced it to decades, if not centuries of constant bloodshed between would-be Masters, former slaves and sellswords. All of that before she died.

Think you are confused. Not applying 2019 concepts. Those slaves didnt want to be slaves and Dany freed them. If you own slaves there is always a risk based on the morals of that world that people will rebel or want to be free. So that is a risk you take by owning slaves.

In the end she still gave those slavers a choice. She did not give the children she torched a choice and that is the distinction made here. The people of KL did not crucify 163 children so you can't morally equate the 2 situations. That is my point. No one is arguing that Dany is good. I am saying her previous actions are not the same as torching innocent children without even giving them a chance to accept her rule.

As for your Slaver's bay nonsense, not going to debate fan fiction. You are creating a narrative to suit your agenda as could juat as easily be the case that it remains free. So just wild speculation.