Game of Thrones - Season 8 - Game Over

@nutter:

This is pretty good stuff.

@nutter: What is the Yub Nub of Game of Thrones?

@acharlie1377: After googling Yub Nub, my shot from the hip is Day After The Long Night Day.

Celebration activities include loss of virginity, the lordhood raffle, binge drinking, drinking games, and leveling out over a cup of Starbucks.

@htr10: I thought long and hard about it, but I think it would make for sensible, compelling, and original storytelling.

@acharlie1377:

You seem to be under the impression that I and everyone else who took issue with Dany's turn is doing so because she was our favorite character whose greatness we all fully bought into to where we were rooting for her as the rightful savior of the seven kingdoms, and that we are all now completely shocked and super-bummed that Dany didn't turn out to be that. Not even a little bit. What I take issue with is the show's presentation of Dany largely as the savior for seven-plus seasons juxtaposed with the latest genocidal spree. The incongruity is laughable. Frankly, I kind of hated the show's incessant attempts to prop Dany up as some hero via writing everything in (often ridiculous) ways that would support this narrative. A whole bunch of people (myself included) felt during this that we as the audience were being oversold on this Dany hero/savior concept to the point that it was irksome, but the show pretty much beat it into everyone's head through characters constantly fawning over Dany, everything working out in her favor without her having to make many hard choices, etc. At a certain point, many just accepted that we as the audience were supposed to like Dany and want to see her succeed, even if we actually didn't.

Fast forward to this latest episode, where the show has her torching innocents in what I guess was supposed to be this heartbreaking turn for her character. Except for those of us who weren't impressed by the show's myriad attempts to portray her as heroic in the past, we were equally unimpressed by the show's "psych!" attempt when she started illogically burning a town to similarly oversell her as a villain. This whole thing wasn't particularly well-disguised or well-crafted from the beginning. The show built her up into a ridiculous fake savior, and then the show had her pull a 180 and turn into basically Hitler. That's just bad fucking writing, and it pisses me off that all those times we were rolling our eyes at virtually everyone in GoT worshiping the breaker of chains, unburnt, blah, blah, it was absolutely warranted and those scenes were in fact a complete fucking waste of time as suspected. It's not that the show fooled the audience, it's that the show spent so much goddamn time trying to build up Dany, only to go "J/K, LOL" near the very end by making her go from zero-to-genocide in a matter of minutes, which is lame as shit and insulting to the audience.

I'm glad you brought up the hypothetical of if the show had made her a pure villain from the start. Honestly, this might have worked way better. They wouldn't have had to constantly invent dumb ways with the writing to have her conveniently conquering places in largely inoffensive fashion (like the "she's hot, so I'll just murder my friends" inanity you referenced). She could have just gone full Genghis Khan with her dragons and the Dothraki, and existed as this looming spectre everyone was actually terrified of, which would have been kinda rad. Except that's not the route the show chose, at all. The show instead chose to spend a great deal of screen time and effort trying to make her appear as anything but a villain, and now seemingly expects the audience to accept her hard villain turn without raising the question of WTF the point of all the b.s. Dany hype was. It really feels like the show wanted this to be some amazing moment where they subverted the Dany story they'd manufactured and blew everyone's minds, but it was actually just a wet fart of a storyline proving to be as disappointing as feared. That, or this is just a sloppy, unplanned plot device intended entirely to set up something in the finale. Neither scenario is good.

I don't need or want characters to be 1s and 0s of either heroes or villains, either. Quite the contrary. I prefer heroes to be flawed and villains to be complex, as that makes for more believable characters. I also highly disagree that this has been a strength of the show. Ramsay Bolton and Euron Greyjoy are a pair of the worst, most cardboard cut-out overvillains in history, whereas the "hero" characters like Jon Snow (and Dany up until this episode) can basically do no wrong. Dany was neither a flawed hero nor a complex villain in this show. She was one fucking note of entitled ambition, and the show largely wrote its way around supporting the idea of Dany as a deserving queen destined for benevolent rule, up until the show decided to hastily make her a genocidal maniac right at the end. This whole storyline, from making her out to be some savior through the nonsensical civilian barbecue, has been 100% contrived, and worse, it was transparently so even as it played out and ultimately offers little in value upon reflection. It further neuters the rewatchability of the series, given that so much of the show focused on building a fake narrative.

Game of Thrones is still a very good show overall, and it's completely fine to like it and want to defend it, but this travesty of a storyline is utterly untenable to me.

There was more nuance in the WWF when Vince McMahon revealed himself to be the "Greater Power".

I don't know, I liked it.

@cornfed40: same

@notnert427: The point I was making with the hypothetical is that any path except the one portrayed in the show would have resulted in Daenerys dying well before she could make it to Westeros. If she had been evil from the very start, she would have never been able to gain allies like the Unsullied, and would not have been able to survive past Qarth, since her dragons weren't full grown until season 3. The only way she makes it this far in the story is if she is adored and zealously followed by people, and the only way to have that make even a little bit of sense is to put her in these situations where she comes of as a liberator.

I said it before, but if you assume that Daenerys is a villian of the show--not evil, just a character who is bad for Westeros--the early seasons don't make any less sense. Some of the worst people in history are known for their charisma and their ability to get people to follow them--that's how we end up with people like Charles Manson and Jim Jones in real life. The important point being, Daenerys was not portrayed as heroic, she was portrayed as charismatic and able to get people to follow her. The fact that she helped people break their chains doesn't make her inherently better or worse, it just means she was able to amass a following that helped her on her quest to the throne. We see that as heroic, because she was helping good people, but all it means is she (a) doesn't like slavery, and (b) understands that she needs the support of the people to get her on the Iron Throne. Being against slavery is not a heroic ideal, even in the world of Westeros--it's more of a baseline test for human decency. Daenerys may be ruthless and cruel, but she was never pure evil.

You mentioned Dany was "one fucking note of entitled ambition"; if that's the one note you got from the 7 seasons of the show, I'm confused as to where the heroic part of her even comes in. Why assume the show is making her a heroic figure, if you don't buy her as one? Put another way, if the show is surrounding her with admiration, love, and respect, and you still aren't convinced that she's a benevolent ruler, isn't that a sign that she isn't one? You're saying that you never liked Dany as a kind ruler, regardless of how hard the showrunners shoved that narrative down your throat, but you were still surprised that she ended up not being a kind ruler. Where did the surprise come from, if you never believed the heroic narrative in the first place?

If you never believed or accepted that Dany was a hero, I'm not sure where our arguments split; it sounds like you never liked her as a hero, and I didn't either. And then when she turned out not to be a hero, even though you never liked her as a hero, you were surprised, because the thing you never believed ended up not being true... maybe I'm misunderstanding your argument, but that's kind of like being an atheist, and then feeling ripped off when you die and there's no afterlife. You assumed the show wanted you to think she was a hero, and then based off of that assumption, you got mad that the show "duped" you by pulling that last-minute twist. If you assume the show is just trying to write an engrossing narrative, though, and don't make assumptions about what they want and don't want you to think, would you have felt as betrayed by the show?

If they digitally edited out that coffee cup, and maybe they digitally edit out Jamie’s regrown right hand, maybe they can digitally add nuance to season 8 at some point...

@acharlie1377:

Few were "surprised" or "duped" by this "twist". The Dany hero/savior narrative always felt overdone/fake (no matter how hard the show tried to push it), and it just proved to be exactly that. The backlash to this, once again, isn't caused by the show fooling everyone (if anyone). It's because the show just nullified half of its own narrative and did so in exceedingly ludicrous fashion. If this was indeed all an attempted bait-and-switch, it fell very flat because she wasn't ever well-established as a hero despite the show's constant efforts to do so, which made her "dark turn" have little to no gravity or shock value. There was plenty to suggest that this was always a possibility for her character (as much as you seem to want to believe everyone but you just completely missed all of that), but the show went overboard trying to always convince the audience that Dany was actually righteous instead, which felt as hollow as it ultimately was to end up with a sadly unsurprising storyline.

The show betrayed itself. If this was the grand plan for Dany's character all along (which I'm skeptical of, BTW), every second the show spent trying to build her up was literal waste, and that's a whole goddamn lot of wasted seconds. So either the show tried and failed to pull one over on the audience in some protracted attempt at a "clever" ruse that wasn't, or this is just a very forced way of setting up what they actually want to do with the finale. Regardless of which is actually the case, the show just nuked a huge part of its own story, and that's equal parts disappointing and annoying. After all of the show's focus on her character's path to try and lay claim to the throne, it's a significant disservice to have Dany, with the throne literally in sight and the city declaring itself conquered, suddenly decide that actually, the throne and Cersei can wait until she senselessly slaughters a town of innocents, in diametric opposition to her actively avoiding killing innocents and yearning for said throne for the entirety of the rest of the show.

I can't state it any more clearly than that.

Not going to touch the ongoing "I think the show did a bad job because of X" "Yeah, well I think it was because of X-prime" "Wanna fight about it?" "Yeah!" conversation

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Was browsing reddit and actually saw a few interesting themes that I think sort of line up with what I've been trying to say: The issue isn't that season 8 is off the wall crazy and ignoring the books. It is that it finally STOPPED ignoring the books

Book Cersei apparently never made an overt action against The Starks and even tried to discourage Jaime from defenestrating Bran. Everything she's done has been to protect her non-Tyrion family. Show Cersei is pure evil and arguably stopped caring about her kids even before Whatshisface defenestrated himself. In that context, someone appealing to her motherly side makes a lot more sense. And her refusing to back down seems a lot more tragic.

We've already discussed how Book-Dany is kind of scary and Show-Dany may or may not have been portrayed in a more positive light.

Book Euron (or Book Golden Company's Leader/Faegon) is a scary brother fucker. Him taking down Jaime (or whoever) would be an epic fight that would put them both over and make sense to end in a double kill. Show Euron was a joke and got his ass handed to him by a cripple.

Book Jon is a god damned idiot who is prone to trusting the wrong people and is way too much his foster father's son. Show Jon is a god damned idiot in different ways. But that would also reconcile, and even riff on, the idea of Ned being too stupid to realize why openly accusing The Queen of murdering The King and banging her brother was a bad idea with Jon not understanding why even acknowledging his father is such a dangerous idea.

Book Euron worships fucking Cthulhu and has the power to destroy The Wall. Three Eyed Bran having less importance and The Ice Zombies getting wiped out with a single shanking makes a lot more sense if it is some crazy pirate rather than a being as old as time. And having some crazy pirate as The Big Bad is just bad writing.

And I've already ranted about how the world is such a mess that there is no way Martin is reconciling story threads in two books, let alone the showrunners in two seasons.

@notnert427: I understand that point, but your conclusion rests on the premise that the show was pushing Dany as a hero of this story; that it built her up in a certain way, only to tear all that down in a way that felt unsatisfying. You've made that clear.

But my point isn't that your conclusion is false based on that premise, it's that the premise itself is false. You say yourself that Dany's heroic arc was never believable; if that's the case, what makes you think the show was trying to convince you she was a hero? If you admit that the possibility of madness was already there, why is it impossible that the show wasn't trying to convince you she was a hero? Was there an interview where the showrunners told us she's meant to be a hero? Is there a line in the books that describe her as the hero of prophecy? Unless I'm mistaken, it's all been open to interpretation, and her role has never been explicitly defined by the author or the showrunners. You assumed the show wanted you to think a certain thing, and then got mad based off of that assumption.

However, if you remove the assumption that Daenerys is supposed to be a hero, there's no evidence in the show that proves she is supposed to be one. She kills all her enemies without the slightest remorse, she crucifies, burns, and feeds people to dragons, and any challenge to her authority is met with swift and brutal retaliation. She doesn't negotiate, and unlike other characters in the show, when she executes people, she frequently does it in the most painful ways imaginable. Cersei locked up Ilaria and forced her to watch her daughter die, and that was an act of unnecessary cruelty; when Daenerys locks Xano Xhoan Daxos in a vault and forces him to suffocate or starve to death, that was also an act of unecessary cruelty. Her closest advisors repeatedly mention that she keeps them around to temper her worst impulses, which heavily implies that without them, she would be a crueler and less forgiving leader.

That being said, there's also no evidence in the show that proves she's supposed to be a villain. She may need others to prevent her from being a villain, but she did choose to surround herself with those types of people. She agrees to help Jon in the fight against the dead. She obviously cares for people like Jorah and Missandei.

My point is that, if you don't assume anything about the show's desired path for Daenerys, then her character is neither unilaterally good nor unilaterally bad. If she had listened to Tyrion, listened to those who were put in place to temper her, she would be a hero, who ultimately rose above her worst impulses. But she didn't; she ignored the advice of those meant to keep her human, and in doing so made it easier for her to unleash the dragon. Your argument is based on the idea that the show "wanted" you to think of Daenerys as a hero, but there isn't evidence to suggest that. If you never thought of her as a hero for 7 seasons, I wouldn't consider that a failure of the writers--I would consider that a strength of Daenerys' characterization.

You mean besides all the characters around her gravitating to her and unflinchingly believing in her, everyone she conquers following her to the ends of the earth, liberated people literally hoisting her up as a crowd like she's some deity, multiple people gleefully dying for her, tacking on a bunch of laudatory titles to her name, her being a force against slavery, her never really doing anything bad to innocents before the last episode, and her never having to make hard choices because the show incessantly wrote things to hand her easy victories with minimal collateral?

Yep, no evidence whatsoever to suggest the show wanted her to be looked at as a hero.

I came across the quote that I was trying to remember before. It's hilarious that some are saying she's always been evil and some Vader/Anakin figure this whole time yet the showrunner said this a couple seasons ago:

D.B. Weiss - "She's not her father and she's not insane and she's not a sadist, but there's a Targaryen ruthlessness that comes with even the good Targaryens."

Kinda like the show Lost, I don't think they had a plan from the beginning. Her turning evil could've been a good arc with the right writing and pacing, but this wasn't it. This is the biggest backlash I've seen against a show or maybe even movie, and it's for a reason.

I see articles calling her the Mad Queen, but really, her dad was called the Mad King because he was crazy asf, not because he was angry. He not only wanted to blowup KL, but he thought the fire would turn him into a dragon and he'd fly away, plus he was doing a bunch of other insane stuff for years. She's evil now, but still not "mad" like her dad, but they'll probably randomly make her so in the final episode.

I mean I gotta say, maybe myself and thousands of other people out there missed something during the last 7 seasons, but I was under the impression she was supposed to be the de-facto "good guy" in all of this up until Season 8 started. It can be easy to get lost in a sharp twist and start looking for clues that were never there as some form of justification. She did some brutal things, her armies went to war, but as far as I'm concerned (and from the reaction online thousands of people as well) she was supposed to be above this and most if not all of her actions set this expectation up. The switch is cool and I'll admit that it finally suits her as the bubbly persona was not working for me at all, but this is a course correction they started in this season. Telling people to bend the knee is not the same as torching an entire city of civilians for no real reason at all.

But saying "I captured you. Bend the knee or die" is kind of fucked up and she did that last season to the Tarly prisoners.

Saying "no compromises. Bend the knee or die" as she did to the slavers is also fucked up, but against folk who probably deserve it ("Come on Mar'. They're Nazis!" is still one of my favorite lines from Happy).

This IS what a "good twist" is. It is something that makes you look back at previous actions and say "Huh, I never thought of it that way". It is why you re-read or re-watch things

A lot of people got through the show and even books thinking "This lady who frees the slaves, kills slavers, and cares about her people is great". Some of us were more cynical and still argue she is a straight up slaver herself. Likely the intent was somewhere in between. Like I said, the books make it a lot clearer that she has been struggling with Madness her entire life.

But the point is still that people aren't "looking for clues that were never there". They (we) are citing actual things she did. Crucifying the slavers is fucked up. Repeatedly feeding people to dragons is fucked up. If everyone, including the watchers/readers, cheered for her then that is more to do with her goals aligning with What Is Good.

I personally feel the delivery of the show AND books was so hamfisted that a lot of this only worked because of the nature of the medium (see Bioshock and "Would you kindly" for a similar case where it is only a surprise because of genre expectations). But I also know that folk have been calling her a bit of a psycho for years (decades?) and there are lots of very easily citable examples of her doing some fucked up shit. And I know that if I ever cared enough to re-read ASOIAF or re-watch GOT I could see a lot of scenes "in a new light", even if that wasn't the intent while filming/writing them. Which then just gets into a Death of the Author kind of discussion.

Staying vague, but one of my favorite fantasy series in recent years is Michael Sullivan''s Riyria Revelations. I am still not convinced that all of his "twists" were planned from book one (definitely book 2 though). And having re-read that a year or so ago I definitely interpreted a few scenes very differently than when I first read them and I can even see some hints of character traits that I totally thought were pulled out of Sullivan's ass for later books. And when Legends of the First Empire finishes I am going to re-read them both again and see what else I pick up on. Good writing isn't just having a master plan from page 1 of book 1 on. A lot of it is adapting what you already did and finding ways to make it work with later plot developments.

Do I think GOT or ASOIAF are good writing? Hell no. I've had issues with GoT since season 1 and I regularly compare Martin to Frank Miller. But I also don't think this Twist was pulled out of nowhere. The writing has been on the wall since book/season 1. The execution was poor, but there is plenty of supporting evidence for this kind of Twist.

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Just to elaborate a bit more (I like doing that):

Dany said "Bend the knee or die" and her favorite slave got her head chopped off. We can make plenty of arguments that King's Landing couldn't rebel because they might get stabbed, but we can also make arguments that the slavers couldn't really rebel either. Many for similar reasons

There are theories that it was supposed to be Faegon in charge of KL at this point and not wanting to rebel against a benevolent and loved Targaryan-ish King would make more sense. I personally think that is irrelevant for the reason I stated, but it looks nicer.

But at the end of the day: Dany did what she always did. She walked up to a bunch of enemies and said "Bend the knee or die". And then she followed through on her punishment the way she always did. She just wasn't punishing evil slavers this time.

@humanity: Yeah, she was overall a "good guy" before the last episode. She had some ruthlessness and wasn't a paragon like the male Starks, but she wasn't evil or crazy either. I think the show should've had her destroy the red keep and murder the Lannister soldiers, since that would be a more gray situation that fans could take different sides on. Making her go so far is now good vs evil and that's kinda boring to gray. Things being gray is what the show was built on, but that died with Tywin and others when the book material ran out. Ramsey and Euron felt like bad cartoon villains and they'll probably now make Dany the same.

I don't know why people bring up the Tarlys so much, they were idiots who were asking to die.

@deathstriker: I feel like you have said "when the book material ran out" several times and I just want to clarify again that a LOT of what is in the show is in the books, especially when it comes to the villains. Ramsey and Euron may get to do more asshole shit in the show than they've had time to do in the books yet, but they're in the books and they're also comically AWFUL in the books as well (if anything, the show toned all of the Iron Islanders by a LOT compared to the book -- Victarion and Euron are literally walking, talking, rape and murder machines that laugh maniacally as they do it). Not excusing the show or anything, but I just get bothered when people act like GRRMs books are some sort of holy text, when he has had the EXACT same issues with finding a good villain as almost every other popular story in recent memory.

Oopsie. So much for the "they've been setting this up since the beginning!" claims when one of the showrunners outright stated otherwise following the Battle of the Bastards, which was all of twelve episodes ago. At this point, though, I'm half-expecting people to try to claim this was another layer of subterfuge before they'll admit that the show clumsily bungled this and made Dany suddenly behave in a completely different manner than what her confirmed portrayal was up through late season 6 at minimum.

I'm not sold that any of this was planned prior to this season, as the first real seed for this turn was Jon not keeping his lineage a secret as she requested and thus becoming a threat to her claim to the throne. And Dany's first intentional murder of a non-evil character in the entire show didn't occur until she roasted Varys, which happened literal minutes before she went full genocide. This was all rushed, in addition to being completely out of character from what the show both portrayed her to be and straight-up said she was.

So, yeah. This whole thing absolutely merits criticism, as it's very arguably the show's biggest fuckup to date with significantly deleterious repercussions to both the prior story beats of the show and whatever now-cheapened finale that this newly tyrannical Dany scenario makes possible.

@notnert427: I would say another fuck up of this season that hardly gets talked about is Jon going from a main character to a secondary character. It feels like Arya has had twice the amount of screentime and even Varys might've said more than Jon this season. Plus, 80% of Jon's lines were "Dany is my queen". Jon used to be my favorite, but he's been on a decline ever since he bent the knee. The writers haven't done anything with him.

There's plenty of criticism worthy of the show basically since S1, but especially this season. Having said that, I don't think what the show runners say in their "deep dive" into an episode is any kind of proof of anything. It's not like they would say "Well see, Dany really IS like her father so she's probably nuts!"

Again, I'm in the camp that saw this coming but thought it was poorly executed and needed to be a bit of a slower burn, I just don't see why it would be considered remotely reliable what the show runners say in those snippets as far as the overall plot is concerned.

Definitely. He's gone from being arguably the lead to someone who simply parrots praise to Dani. Tyrion also feels like a completely different person.

@gundato: Book Cersei is mostly just incompetent. They're just so far ahead of the books at this point, and so bad at building character outside of the book storyline, that its just baffling to see her move from idiot to badass queen.

Anyway, the real losers here are all of the kids named after Dany. What a garbage character this season, literally all they had to do to make this episode believable is to have her just nuke the red keep. This show is written by children.

Also Age of Myth is great.

@north6: If there is one thing that I'm surprised by almost constantly, it's how much people like that character even before her "big" turn to pure evil. I have always felt in the book she reads like she's taking advantage of situations by freeing the slaves, etc...and the show isn't much better. The character has just so often been wooden and boring save for the few times she lights people on fire. The rest of the time she's either friend-zoning Jorah, boning a random merc, or prattling on endlessly about how she will take back what is hers. I am baffled that people named their kids after that character, of all characters.

@sethmode: Yeah, Dany just reads like a bungling buffoon this season. Stumbling through a terrible plan at the defense of Winterfell and somehow making it even dumber, then *forgetting* about the iron fleet and getting Rhaegal shot down because she doesn't know how to scout - to be kind, to this business in King's Landing. She just seems like she's throwing a tantrum for being bad at her job.

You've just described a cult leader. Hell, most of those attributes could be applied to the High Sparrow, and I don't think anyone is jumping to call him a hero. Most of them would also apply to Charles fucking Manson. The last thing isn't even a heroic attribute, it's just lazy writing.

People who follow someone without question and without doubts are doing so either out of zealotry or fear. Every other "good" leader in the show is challenged by their underlings at some point, and have to justify their position; the evil leaders, on the other hand, are never questioned, because people either fear them too much or idolize them too much. Nothing you've described is inherent to a hero.

For what feels like the hundredth time, my argument is not that this was planned from the very beginning, my point is that NOTHING was planned from the very beginning; from episode 1, she had the potential to be a benevolent leader and an insane tyrant. She has been shown as caring, and she has been shown as cruel, and both those sides of her have been on display numerous times throughout the show.

That said, that quote could literally be applied to any character in a work of fiction who ends up turning bad. Anakin Skywalker, Captain Ahab, Kurtz from Heart of Darkness--all of these are people who started out decent, but fell prey to their worst impulses. There's no reason Dany should be considered any different.

Basically what I'm saying is you can track the quality of this show with Tyrion's interest in prostitutes.

@gundato: Her character was never based on the whole bend the knee ideology though. That is a recent development of the last season or so and even then she felt conflicted most of the time or at least hesitant. I don’t think she was ever a psycho, I always thought she was a dimwit. In past seasons it was very apparent how everyone around her schemes and plotted several moves ahead but Dany was always an extremely simple minded character that at first simply vouched for “freedom of tyrants” and then when the cruel world kicked her around a bit she resigned herself to being led by her advisors.

But despite all that, what most people have an issue with is that this last episode had a dramatic character shift. Don’t get me wrong I agree that given another full season of steady character development she would arrive at this same point from a dull, one note character to a more complicated and compromised one. That said in this scenario she said bend the knee to Cersei and her armies, and the armies did bend the knee, and then she murdered everyone anyway starting with the civilians. When she conquered Meereen she didn’t crucify the entire city - that would be insane - she just crucified the masters and killed their soldiers, and that’s war. She has always been about liberating people from under tyrants. There is no build up to this switch. There are no clues, no hints. She torched the civilian side of a city AFTER it has surrendered. That’s a HUGE difference.

The people writing Game of Thrones got this page set as there homepage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

Holy shit did they run out off ideas just let a big rock fall on there heads.

Aristotle was the first to use a Greek term equivalent to the Latin phrase deus ex machina as a term to describe the technique as a device to resolve the plot of tragedies. It is generally deemed undesirable in writing and often implies a lack of creativity on the part of the author

Also don't get the logic of taking over a Capital with minor effort and then decide to burn everyone? If you look at history most off the looting and pillaging was done to keep the soldiers happy or out off pure profit of Slave trading, just burning a city you just took with minor effort doesn't make to much sense to me. Wouldn't you be more enclient to capture the Queen and torture / throw here in a pit to rot for the rest off your life? i Played Crusader Kings II i know how this go's you throw people you don't like in a pit!

Cant wait for the final episode where a comet just destroys the whole planet, just be done with it :D.

The One True Take to Rule Them All.

real talk: this controversial 'turn' has had zero material impact on my enjoyment of the story (for better or worse) because dany has always been the least interesting character IMO. her overriding character motivation has been her 'birthright,' which- on a show with multiple complex characters with conflicting motivations- is just about the most boring writing there is. it's like getting upset that the cucumber sandwiches are soggy.

that said- i do feel for anyone who was deeply invested in dany's character (or legitimately enjoys the tamest food on the planet, the cucumber sandwich). but i'd also say- they should have written you a more 3-dimensional character several seasons ago. she should have truly and explicitly struggled with what it means to be a targaryen prior to this season. there were hints at it, but not enough time or explicit dialogue spent. maybe that means they should have kept viserys around as a character foil. it doesn't help that the story doesn't have many living examples of targaryens around to telegraph this stuff- and the ones we do have (other than dany) being jon and aemon- did/do not seem very targaryen-ish.

But honestly, I think people had unrealistic expectations of the show. Sure its had its issues, but literally every show ever has some sort of problem and almost every show ends with a disappointing whimper. When they announced only 13 episodes, I feel like if you didn't pull back your own expectations thats on you. There was no way to wrap up everything in nice bow and continue at the pace they were going at. They had to finish the show and only had 13 episodes to wrap up all these story-line that, if were being honest, half were drug along. Sure, they've should at least went with 20 in stead of 13, but they didn't. Sure I wish we were getting 3-4 more seasons, but I'm also glad were getting conclusions. GRRM is partly to blame here. He should've finished the books. But book readers should prepare themselves accordingly because this is the only end your going to get. That last book is never getting finished (at least by GRRM anyways & to be fair, he doesn't have to nor does he 'owe it to fans' to finish it either)

Passion is great and having different opinions on it are also great, but at the end of the day, Its a great TV show with a few hiccups, not some blight on humanity like some people are acting. Imagine the internet using all this vitriol and negative passion towards this TV show and instead actually using it towards real life issues. One can dream.

@atastyslurpee: People who disagree with me should go outside, it's just a TV show.

@atastyslurpee: I don't know i think the last season of Breaking bad is a nice golden standard to use in rolling everything up, But then Vince Gilligan is on a other level when it comes to writing.

2 shortened seasons was not long enough to create enough character development to warrant Danys actions, never mind everything else that had transpired in those episodes. The writers didn't earn what they wanted to show us.

What HBO should have done is wait for George R R Martin to finish his books, and continue the series from there, and just as importantly, increase the number of episodes to ensure adequate character development. Yes, yes, and yes, it would have possibly meant needing to hire replacement actors who would feel the need to go do other things, but the quality of the series, I believe would not have suffered.

Oh well, water under the bridge.

@hankrazorbeard: "Passion is great and having different opinions on it are also great"

Strange...

Exactly, sounds pretty great! "One can dream" like I said

Criticize the show all you want, be my guest. They will probably 'ruin' Star Wars next so people will get upset about that too or MORE upset than they already are.

I get it, you hate the show. Good for you. You think the show sucks now. Sorry you feel that way.

The problem with the cult leader idea is that the show took the two most savvy/wise characters in the show in Tyrion/Varys and had them fully buy in to Dany's virtue and serve as her advisors. This legitimized her, in addition to adding to her hero portrayal by showing her selfless willingness to listen to others. Then every "good" character she encountered also happened to align with her. I guess there's an argument that characters like Jorah and Jon falling in love with her could be viewed as basically them being under her cult spell, but clustering the smart and/or likable characters around her is further evidence of who the show made her out to be.

Others in this thread have made the made the argument that this was planned from the start, whether you personally have or not. On this point, though, we happen to agree. They left the possibility open for her to end up as either a hero or villain. However, we disagree greatly on how much the show tried to build her up as a hero compared with the hints that she could be a villain. The villain stuff is based on a few scattered incidents of her being cruel to awful characters, which is pretty much a non-starter given that these actions can barely be considered cruel in the GoT universe and that the recipients somewhat deserved it. The hero stuff is literally everything else in the show until she torched Varys.

I believe the writers didn't make the decision to have Dany "turn" until just before this season, and the limited time remaining partially led to this feeling more abrupt than it had to, which isn't helping. That said, I'm far from excusing the "hard sell" of her torching a town for no reason. That was shit any way you slice it, and them previously writing themselves into a bit of a corner with all the Dany overhype throughout the show and then trying to hastily write themselves out of it via having her become senselessly genocidal to innocents is an absolute failure. It's sloppy at best.

Man, the look on Dany's face. So fucking great.

This episode got me back in an old school Game of Thrones mood, goddamn, and it's great. Love it.

@atastyslurpee: I don't think anyone can argue that the show changed a lot from the early seasons, since that was a game of chess where you lived or died by the moves you made. The last few seasons have a ton of plot armor on certain characters - Arya got shanked 9 times in the stomach and walked it off lol. Jon fell in frozen water with zombies on him and climbed back on for Benjen to randomly save him and die for him... even though both of them could fit on the horse lol. The show has gone downhill. There are speeches that GRRM has given about writing and the last few seasons the writers do the things GRRM says writers shouldn't do. Most fans and even the actors on the show have shown disappointment for a reason.

Going by your logic, if you guys defended the green new deal, or whatever else, like you defend GoT the world would be a better place. The dumb logic is a two way street.

I'm done trying to discuss this here as you can provide lots of concrete examples from the text and show and just get told "But she was the chosen one"

But if there is one great thing to come out of this: Now a lot more people understand what we were feeling with Mass Effect 3. Yeah, the game needed some work. But the ending(s) flowed logically out of the themes of the previous games and a lot of the hangups were on some bog standard sci-fi tropes. But rather than just acknowledge "The ending was fine, the execution was a bit shit" it became "This is complete garbage and it came out of nowhere and it ruined everything and I hate everyone and CHANGE IT!"

Which I guess makes me wonder if Lost actually wasn't that bad either. Not enough to go watch it, but enough to make me wonder how much was bad writing/obvious retcons and how much was just violating head canon.

@gundato: Just my opinion, but I thought the ending of Lost did very well by its characters and I remember loving it. Most of the backlash was (I think) around the mythology of the island not really paying off super well, but that was secondary to the character stories for me.

This season has reminded me why I rarely watch random crap on tv, it's a pity because it used to be good. Great for anyone who is enjoying it but I can't get down with writing that ignores the logic of it's own world in order to create a spectacle. Respawning armies anyone?

Show died for me when they killed the night king in such a cheesy way. Oh well.

@notnert427: People are convinced to join cults when they're vulnerable or depressed, and looking for purpose. Every single person who allied with Dany did so at a time when they were in some way lost or dejected--Jorah had been exiled from his homeland, Ser Barristan was just removed from the Kingsguard, Tyrion had just killed his father and lover, Jon was facing an unstoppable army of the dead and is also a naiive idiot (see Ygritte), Varys had just witnessed the worst person in all of Westeros become king (Joffrey), and Missandei and Grey Worm were in a life of slavery. In other words, they came to Daenerys (or were approached by Daenerys) at significant low points in their lives, and were given the opportunity to be a part of something greater. It's easy for someone to overlook all of a leader's flaws, when that leader has been shaped as the sole driver of purpose in the person's life. The only person to ally themselves with Dany wholeheartedly, without doing so from a place of loss, was Daario Naharis, and we both agree that his existence is plot convenience at its worst.

Compare that to every other alliance made during the show's time period. When Robb Stark asked for the assistance of his bannermen, they agreed because they had already pledged loyalty to the starks, and people like Jon Umber, the Karstarks, and the Freys put up some resistance. When Catelyn Stark approached Renly Baratheon, she didn't do so out of weakness, she did so out of strategic merit. When Davos asked his pirate friend to assist him in the battle of Blackwater, the pirate only did so on the condition that he got to fuck Cersei. Jon Snow convinced the wildlings to follow him while they were weak, but their alliance never rested on undying and unquestioning allegiance to him--it was always portrayed as tenuous at best, and several wildlings AND Night's Watchmen were strongly opposed to the idea. When Jon Snow is preparing for the fight against the dead, his decisions and interests are questioned almost constantly.

The exceptions to this rule also align with the fear/zealotry angle. People followed the High Sparrow without question, but that's never portrayed as anything but a cult of personality. No one (except the aforementioned High Sparrow) ever truly questioned Joffrey or Cersei's rule, because they were too afraid of the consequences. The only leaders who are never challenged by their advisors are the ones who are exceptionally feared or idolized to the level of godhood, and Daenerys is no exception.

In short, all of the "good/likable" characters who "legitimized" Daenerys' rule did so at the lowest point in their lives, when the opportunity to ally with her gave them a chance to redeem themselves, and when all of their other options inevitably led to worse lives. I think that, at the very latest, the showrunners came up with the Mad Queen conclusion before the beginning of the sixth season; you can see her at her most ruthless there, feeling smug about her seventeen titles in front of Jon Snow, demanding he bend the knee before she helps save the world, roasting the Tarlys because they didn't want to bend the knee, etc. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Mad Queen idea came at any point before then, either; regardless of when they had the idea, the actual turn towards madness wouldn't have happened towards the end of the show anyways.

I'll definitely admit it was rushed, and it feels like the audience is meant to fill in the blanks for some of the 8th season, but that doesn't mean it was unplanned or unjustified, just that the showrunners had to cut some scenes to fit the last season into 6 episodes.

@gundato: People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. You complain that people don't listen to your arguments, yet you're quick to ignore counter-arguments and strawman real hard. What were you expecting? For people to say that that you're right and your opinion is the one true one? The point of discussing things isn't to bend others to your opinion, it's to learn from opposing viewpoints. Not saying you're not the only one doing that in this thread, but you're the only one pretending like your opinion is the only well thought out one.

There are some genuinely great posts that I responded to

And then there are the repeated "but she is the hero" ones that outright ignore all the evidence saying otherwise.

I'm not a fan of this season, but this petition for a remake is idiotic. Why do people always do this?

@barrock: because this season is just so god-awful (despite what some apologists in this thread say) that it has retroactively ruined 5-7 years of great TV, and some people can only cope with that by imagining a world where they can pretend this season doesn't exist lol.

Edit: I also want to point out how unintentionally accurate this thread title is now that we know how season 8 is panning out.

Good to know things can still get a Mass Effect reaction out of people even after all these years.

It's a rushed season, yeah, and I almost dont want to touch the Dany discussion with a 10 ft lole at this point but here I go...

Her character has always been about dichotomy. She is a ruthless person who was previously doing bad things to bad people (or people lumped in with bad people) to survive, conquer, or free. As a result the story propped her up as a hero every time it could despite her methods often being tyrannical or just downright cruel.

On the other side of this, she has her good moments. She doesnt want to mistreat people she doesnt believe deserve it. Locking up her dragons when they kill a child, claiming to not want to be the ruler of ashes, fighting the night king, etc. To claim she has always been good up until this point is false, but she has usually had good intentions and motivations for the things she does occaisionally. Problem is once she decides you're bad or that you're in the way of her birthright she'll do whatever she wants to you regardless of how morally questionable it is.

In this case, however, we see her do a very bad thing to generally innocent people. I can see where they're going with the "coin flip" mental state idea, and how putting Dany in a desperate and vulnerable position with Jon and Westeros leads to turning her more brutal tendencies to people who dont deserve it. Does it make sense in the grand scheme, to me it does. Could it have been done better, oh definitely. Was it given enough time for the audience to swallow that pill, probably not considering how long people have followed Dany with a vision of her being a savior, but the threads are loosely there throughout the series. The problem with a coin flip is that it can land both ways, and the show spent more time acting like she was the good side of the coin rather than the bad. In the end when they caught the coin and revealed it with a "psych! bad!" I can see how that is frustrating. If the ratio of time spent on Dany rising versus time spent on watching Dany fall was better I think we'd have a better season. Some of the internets reaction seems like an over reaction to me, but the internet is going to internet in the end. There are far worst things worth criticizing about the writing in my opinion, but it is what it is at this point.