Television Game of Thrones - Season 8 - Starting April 14th

[Massdriver]

2 hours ago, Anathema- said:

As far as Jaime's arc being a circle... Uh yeah that's by-the-book how tragedies are written. A bad person does bad things, rejects the opportunity to change for the better, and ultimately pays the price (often with a fate worse than death).

The very definition of innovative apparently!

[Massdriver]

1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

And just for the record, those constraints were self-imposed by the writers themselves, not by HBO who wanted the show to end at a full 10 seasons.

And that is the bottom line. They were tired.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I think the outright hate is ridiculous. There's criticism to be had, sure. But it still better than the majority of TV out there. 

[Amazatron]

15 minutes ago, johnny said:

I want whatever outcome pisses half of y’all off the most 

 

Very MAGA of you...

[Massdriver]

9 minutes ago, johnny said:

I want whatever outcome pisses half of y’all off the most 

If Jon became ruler and it implied he was successful at it, I think that would be a disservice to the entire show. Jon is his Uncle Ned. It wouldn't be at all shocking if after Jon died, Ned's consciousness went into his body. If you look at Jon, he hasn't learned a damn thing and cares far too much about honor instead of the big picture which ends up getting tons of people killed. When Jon rejects Dany, why not talk to her and not completely just reject her. Tell her you love her, that you want to get intimate with her again, and you want to stay with her for the night. Instead it's implied he leaves ever after Dany says something about ruling through fear. Jon, that might be a hint! It doesn't bother me because Jon has been nothing but consistently stupid, although he does make a lot of morally right choices in the process. He would be easily manipulated and corrupted and would a terrible ruler though. 

 

I could see Jon becoming the ruler and since he doesn't want it, he renounces it and tries to reform the political process after witnessing so much death. I really think he should die though.

[Massdriver]

10 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

I think the outright hate is ridiculous. There's criticism to be had, sure. But it still better than the majority of TV out there. 

It's one of the the best, most innovative tv shows ever made. It's the best fantasy show ever made for sure. They could have the next episode be Jon and Dany kissing and eating lemon cakes the whole time giggling in a bedroom with no context and it would still be the best. It paved the way for other high budget fantasy in production right now and could usher in a golden age of fantasy tv shows. We shall see!

[Anathema-]

32 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

If Jon became ruler and it implied he was successful at it, I think that would be a disservice to the entire show. Jon is his Uncle Ned. It wouldn't be at all shocking if after Jon died, Ned's consciousness went into his body. If you look at Jon, he hasn't learned a damn thing and cares far too much about honor instead of the big picture which ends up getting tons of people killed. When Jon rejects Dany, why not talk to her and not completely just reject her. Tell her you love her, that you want to get intimate with her again, and you want to stay with her for the night. Instead it's implied he leaves ever after Dany says something about ruling through fear. Jon, that might be a hint! It doesn't bother me because Jon has been nothing but consistently stupid, although he does make a lot of morally right choices in the process. He would be easily manipulated and corrupted and would a terrible ruler though. 

 

I could see Jon becoming the ruler and since he doesn't want it, he renounces it and tries to reform the political process after witnessing so much death. I really think he should die though.

 

 

[5timechamp]

I have yet to watch an episode of the show.........but its everywhere lately

of this show i know this:

 

Sean Bean..lots of Memes.

Dragons (more like Wyverns methinks)....

So after searching youtube for videos of the Dragons in action 2 things: the musical score for the show is great....the sound made right before the Dragons breathe fire is awesome...

the end.

[SuperSpreader]

17 minutes ago, 5timechamp said:

I have yet to watch an episode of the show.........but its everywhere lately

of this show i know this:

 

Sean Bean..lots of Memes.

Dragons (more like Wyverns methinks)....

So after searching youtube for videos of the Dragons in action 2 things: the musical score for the show is great....the sound made right before the Dragons breathe fire is awesome...

the end.

The ponies save beanchild

[fuckle85]

Watching it again, it's kind of frustrating how I can't figure out why Dany would go mad queen to the extent she did.  I get that the throne is what's corrupting her and motivates her a lot, but she also clearly does believe in justice, ruthless as she is sometimes.  Murdering an entire city of innocent civilians is a MASSIVE escalation and, from what I remember, much worse than anything implied in the show about the dark side of her character.  

 

Ultimately I think the mad queen twist could definitely work.The possibility was always in the air, even in season 1.  And it won't surprise me if it makes it into the books, but the show dropped the ball on portraying her descent into madness leading up to that in a convincing enough way for me. Those four or five scenes that were intended to show her downward spiral felt more to me like she was mourning her losses of her advisors/friends rather than descending into psychosis.  There should have been several more episodes where the drama hinged on whether or not she would go crazy. 

 

So I went from being like "damn, I feel so bad for Dany, she's very beside herself" to "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE YOU DOING! WHY?"  It was confusing. 

 

Also, SHE WON THE FUCKING WAR. SHE HAD IT IN THE BAG. IT WAS OVER. What possible reason at that point did she have for going full mad queen!!!????  Killing the rest of the soldiers and Cersei?  Sure, but she's killing literally EVERYONE BUT CERSEI.  Say what you will about Dany but the most corrupt were always first on her list.  I guess the implication was that she didn't want to damage her swordchair by blowing up the castle or whatever, but man that just seems like it requires a lot of suspension of disbelief of what is known about that character.  I feel like it could have played out much better and been far more dramatic if it happened as she started losing the battle. Something to push her in that direction of burning it all down.  That would have still been an escalation but a more understandable one and less jarring.
 

[Massdriver]

I think we are supposed to just accept she went mad like her ancestors, but I agree it was a big jump from her past cruelties and didn’t feel authentic. We needed more like 5 more episodes to watch her spiral down rather than the few scenes we got. The background was certainly there, but I would have loved to see some escalation in the psychotic behavior, incrementally increasing in intensity.   

[Spork3245]

‘Member when Danny locked up two of her dragons because they accidentally killed one innocent child?

[thewhyteboar]

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/game-of-thrones-the-bells/

This is long but really good I think:

 

But a deeper problem is that we don’t want to admit that Daenerys is right, because we don’t want to admit what monarchy is. There are no good kings and queens, something Varys should have known (Jon Snow would be a good king, maybe, and his reign would be extremely short). Kings and queens are selfish people who will kill you when they need you to die; while Tyrion should have been reading Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Carl Schmitt, Daenerys was out learning, in the field, what exactly the throne is. She is open about it. She is honest. She had wanted everyone to love her, and tried to make it happen. But as the people who loved her kept dying—and as her “allies” turned against her and her enemies grew stronger—she correctly identified the failure of this strategy, and changed tactics. Just like she attacked the ships from the sun—ambushing them instead of letting them ambush her—she has abandoned a failing tactic, based on her knowledge of the field of play, and adopted a winning one.

 

The problem is that we, the audience, expect her to be different. We expect the will of the governed to matter, and we expect a throne to be replaced with something different and better, something like, I don’t know, just spit-balling here, a two-party representative republican democracy with a free press and a bill of rights and a separation of church and state. We are moderns, and we like these characters, so—with the same anachronistic illusions as bedevil so many period dramas (where white people never seem to be racist, for example, and women often manage to enjoy full social personhood)—we expect them to be moderns too. Tyrion and Varys and Jon want a different world—our world, we narcissistically assume—and so we imagine they are the good guys, and that they will win; we imagine that they are seeing clearly and working to bring about Hope and Change.

But none of these people live in a world of hope and change. They live in a world where dragons kill sheep, where you either win or you die, and where “politics” is the maneuvering amongst allies, rivals, and enemies, a game of thrones in which “the people” only suffer. What Daenerys (like Olenna and Cersei) believes, and commits to, makes this the only interesting episode of the season: that power is power.

 

The problem, ultimately, is not that Daenerys is a mad queen; there is no such thing. It’s a redundant phrase. Power corrupts and absolute power—dragon power, destiny power, fantasy power—most of all. To be a king or queen is to win the game, and to win the game, everyone else has to lose, and die. That’s the game. And if the fantasy of “High Fantasy” is always that absolute rulers might rule well and kindly and with good intentions for their people, then Game of Thrones has abruptly woken up and remembered what a queen is.

[fuckle85]

Yes, which is why the most positive ending of the show would be destroying the throne, doing away with the monarchy and replacing it with a large council or something.  But Dany going that level insane for no reason was just confusing, power hungry though she may be.  Imo it would've made more sense for her to be pushed into madness, burning it all down as a result of fear of losing her throne, rather than doing it after she already won everything.  Either that or write her character in season 1-7 to be a bit more ruthless and unstable than she was.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

SFLUFAN Hot Take: what Daenerys doesn't even come close to qualifying as an "insane" act. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

SFLUFAN Hotter Take:  there is practically no difference whatsover between what Daenerys did and the dropping of the atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki as in both instances the war had effectively been won.  In light of that, was Harry Truman the "Mad President" for doing so?

[Spork3245]

2 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

SFLUFAN Hotter Take:  there is practically no difference whatsover between what Daenerys did and the dropping of the atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki as in both instances the war had effectively been won.  In light of that, was Harry Truman the "Mad President" for doing so?

 

Hot Take: Japan didn’t surrender prior to us dropping those bombs [insert_Rocky_”I_didn’t_hear_no_bell”]

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

4 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

Hot Take: Japan didn’t surrender prior to us dropping those bombs [insert_Rocky_”I_didn’t_hear_no_bell”]

That's an absolutely valid point, but it was pretty much a given that Japan was finished and their surrender was essentially an "academic" exercise at that point in August 1945.

 

We could've just "waited them out", but chose to drop the atomic bombs as a demonstration to the soon-to-be Soviet enemy.  Essentially, we "let it be fear".

[fuckle85]

12 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

SFLUFAN Hotter Take:  there is practically no difference whatsover between what Daenerys did and the dropping of the atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki as in both instances the war had effectively been won.  In light of that, was Harry Truman the "Mad President" for doing so?

 

I feel like the writers might've fumbled an opportunity to make an interesting parallel with that by having Dany nuke everything after she won her throne instead of nuking everything thinking she will lose or something. 

[GeneticBlueprint]

50 minutes ago, fuckle85 said:

Also, SHE WON THE FUCKING WAR. SHE HAD IT IN THE BAG. IT WAS OVER. What possible reason at that point did she have for going full mad queen!!!????  Killing the rest of the soldiers and Cersei?  Sure, but she's killing literally EVERYONE BUT CERSEI.  Say what you will about Dany but the most corrupt were always first on her list.  I guess the implication was that she didn't want to damage her swordchair by blowing up the castle or whatever, but man that just seems like it requires a lot of suspension of disbelief of what is known about that character.  I feel like it could have played out much better and been far more dramatic if it happened as she started losing the battle. Something to push her in that direction of burning it all down.  That would have still been an escalation but a more understandable one and less jarring.
 

 

She was not greeted as a beloved savior like every time she had previously conquered. But as a feared tyrant. The people were still on Cersei's side. As she said, "Fear it is, then."

[Spork3245]

Just now, SFLUFAN said:

That's an absolutely valid point, but it was pretty much a given that Japan was finished and their surrender was essentially an "academic" exercise at that point in August 1945.

 

They didn't even surrender after the bombs, though. It was arguably from Russia formally declaring war on them. Japan in WW2 was... weird. Their soldiers would literally run in straight lines at machine gun fire because they had a mentality of "not changing tactics" unless their CO told them to, they would literally fight to the last man without surrender. Hell, wasn't there some forgotten Japanese soldier on an island somewhere that was fighting WW2 into the late 70s? The options were to drop those bombs or go ahead with X-Day. Danny hit KL with the a-bombs AND did X-Day simultaneously  

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The essential point I'm trying to convey is that Daenerys's actions are not indicative of "madness" in the least.

[Spork3245]

2 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

The essential point I'm trying to convey is that Daenerys's actions are not indicative of "madness" in the least.

 

I mean... she basically burned a white flag.

[thewhyteboar]

2 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

The essential point I'm trying to convey is that Daenerys's actions are not indicative of "madness" in the least.

Another illustrative analogy is Caesar. Caesar took the path of ambition and thousands died. No one thinks Caesar is mad.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

2 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I mean... she basically burned a white flag.

So what?

 

That has to do with "morality", not "sanity".

[fuckle85]

12 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

She was not greeted as a beloved savior like every time she had previously conquered. But as a feared tyrant. The people were still on Cersei's side. As she said, "Fear it is, then."

 

She wasn't a complete tyrant though, or at least tried not to be.  Welp, so much for that!  

[Spork3245]

Just now, SFLUFAN said:

So what?

 

Randomly killing the civilians and surrendering soldiers goes against her previous actions in previous seasons and shows a sudden personality shift which could be construed as "madness" in the world of GoT.

[Spork3245]

11 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

That has to do with "morality", not "sanity".

 

^^^

Just saw the edit

 

10 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

Randomly killing the civilians and surrendering soldiers goes against her previous actions in previous seasons and shows a sudden personality shift which could be construed as "madness" in the world of GoT.

 

https://www.dualdiagnosis.org/mental-disorders-caused-addiction/sudden-personality-changes-in-adults/

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Yes, in the world of Game of Thrones, it can be construed as "madness" by the vast majority.  However, I'm willing to bet that if you asked Tyrion or the now crispy Varys, they'd say that she's not "mad", she's just finally being what she always was.

[fuckle85]

The overall takeaway of the inherent systemic corruption of the politics of the seven kingdoms and how, much like monarchies in human history (fighting and killing harder means you are the "better" ruler, history being written by the "winners", the way the perception of what justice is how it can be warped, and the way politics exist the perceptions of the civilians and how it also shapes world events, etc)  domino effects into similar events shown in the ending of the show is still pretty much there.  I just think the show could've still made those points and not dumbed down the writing of their characters and lots of other stuff that was simplified and condensed in these last two seasons. All well, there's still the remaining books to look forward to being released soon after all this time  lmao

[Spork3245]

4 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

Yes, in the world of Game of Thrones, it can be construed as "madness" by the vast majority.  However, I'm willing to bet that if you asked Tyrion or the now crispy Varys, they'd say that she's not mad, she's just finally being what she always was.

 

You mean the two people who only met her within a year or so? 

Her actions aren't what shows madness,  IMO. For instance, Joffrey wasn't necessarily mad, he was always an evil little dick. It's the personality shift that constitutes as madness here, IMO.

 

FWIW, also IMO, they're making her look physically unwell and disheveled, which are also signs of sudden bouts of mental illness like bi-polar disorder, or, in this world "madness".

[Ghost_MH]

Can we all just appreciate that Jon continues to be the luckiest idiot alive? He had two chances to prevent this from happening and he ignores Dany both times. He lives no matter how terrible he is at appreciating the consequences of his actions.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

In regard to writing, this Twitter thread actually made me ever-so-slightly more sympathetic to D&D - it's definitely worth your time:

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just now, Ghost_MH said:

Can we all just appreciate that Jon continues to be the luckiest idiot alive? He had two chances to prevent this from happening and he ignores Dany both times. He lives no matter how terrible he is at appreciating the consequences of his actions.

I guess "knowing nothing" has its benefits!

[Ghost_MH]

3 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

You mean the two people who only met her within a year or so? 

Her actions aren't what shows madness,  IMO. For instance, Joffrey wasn't necessarily mad, he was always an evil little dick. It's the personality shift that constitutes as madness here, IMO.

 

FWIW, also IMO, they're making her look physically unwell and disheveled, which are also signs of sudden bouts of mental illness like bi-polar disorder, or, in this world "madness".

 

That also seems like a good sign of depression. Depression brought about by, say, her dream being ripped away from her by the naivety of the man she loves and the death of the closest thing she had to a friend.