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

[Spork3245]

Just now, Ghost_MH said:

 

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.

 

Or PTSD or many other things.  

[TheGreatGamble]

1 hour ago, fuckle85 said:

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.
 

You can’t understand why the woman who has said “I’ll take what’s mine through fire and blood” multiple times finally took what she wanted through fire and blood? Her madness has been foreshadowed. And she’s lost almost everything since coming across the sea.

[johnny]

If Jon was a good guy he would have married Dany. He got her to listen about the white walkers if he was loyal he could have prevented that massacre :P 

[johnny]

6 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

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

 

 

Read this last week. Does a great job of detailing how hard it is to finish this series

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

2 minutes ago, johnny said:

Read this last week. Does a great job of detailing how hard it is to finish this series

His thoughts from last night episode are less-than-positive

[Ghost_MH]

8 minutes ago, johnny said:

If Jon was a good guy he would have married Dany. He got her to listen about the white walkers if he was loyal he could have prevented that massacre :P 

 

That's my point. Dany practically begs him to do right by her and urgent her from having to make these decisions in the future. He ignores her with his sisters. After that she had nobody to comfort her and she turns to him...after he tells Varys that she shouldn't be left alone in her condition and he rejects her advances. Jon makes a different decision in either case and things turn out very differently.

 

Jon is just an idiot. Time and time again. The fact that Varys thought he'd be a good king is his worst decision after seeding rebellion. If Dany takes out Cersei, what would be his plan then? The largest armies left standing in Westeros are loyal to her and her alone, and nobody else had dragons. He could have attempted a coup after she took the throne, but before she did? That's stupid, but still not as stupid as thinking Jon could be a good king.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Oh, and GRRM has weighed in on the ludicrous rumor that he was finished with the last two books and was waiting until the show ended to release them.

[TheGreatGamble]

14 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".

But it’s not a personality shift. Dany had previously denied herself her instinct to destroy, and never had a problem with indiscriminate murder. 

 

She realised westeros didn’t love her, so she made them fear her.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

For all intents and purposes, Daenerys is a foreign leader at the head of a foreign army with flying WMDs.

 

That's not a "liberation" - that's an "invasion", and the people being invaded tend to not like that very much, even if they're not too fond of their current rulers *coughOperationIraqiFreedomcough*

[fuckle85]

27 minutes ago, TheGreatGamble said:

You can’t understand why the woman who has said “I’ll take what’s mine through fire and blood” multiple times finally took what she wanted through fire and blood? Her madness has been foreshadowed. And she’s lost almost everything since coming across the sea.

Yea, I already mentioned how the possibility of that happening at some point made sense despite the iffy nature of how her descent into complete tyranny was portrayed in the show.

 

 

30 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

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

 

 

 

I can't remember if it was mentioned ITT yet or not, but one of the things that makes GRRM's world so hard to bring to the screen when two of his books are unfinished is the fact that, unlike Tolkien, he writes so much of the story, including figuring out all the lore and backstory of Westeros, as he goes along.  That tweet was an insightful look at how the writers were trying to tackle that with the show.

[johnny]

6 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

For all intents and purposes, Daenerys is a foreign leader at the head of a foreign army with flying WMDs.

 

That's not a "liberation" - that's an "invasion" and the people being invaded tend to not like that very much, even if they're not too fond of their current rulers *coughOperationIraqiFreedomcough*

Good point. There’s definitely a difference between freeing slaves in Essos to invading Westeros 

[thewhyteboar]

 

[johnny]

My friend who pretty much dislikes everything that’s considered good said he did NOT like this episode. Therefore, this was a good episode! 

 

Just for more info he also DESPISES the last Jedi! 

[johnny]

 

she deserves it 

[thewhyteboar]

8 minutes ago, johnny said:

 

she deserves it 

It's like NFL free agency. You get paid for your past work. Good for her.

[fuckle85]

Alright, this thread has me thinking a lot about the final two episodes now.  So, from Daenerys perspective and her goals and based on what we know about the political climate of King's Landing, what was most likely to have happened if, after the siege, she immediately captured Cersei, aired out her crimes (Bran could be consulted to find living witnesses) and publicly executes her under those charges before taking the throne?  Then she assigns Jon to rule with her, since he is the rightful heir to the throne?  Maybe he would be the face of the kingdom, and not required to do much, and she would be the actual ruler.  Assuming all of this went according to plan, what is most likely be the reaction from the kingdom?

[Spork3245]

50 minutes ago, TheGreatGamble said:

But it’s not a personality shift. Dany had previously denied herself her instinct to destroy, and never had a problem with indiscriminate murder. 

 

She realised westeros didn’t love her, so she made them fear her.

 

She had a thing about not hurting innocents and “freeing” people. She was literally torching children. She locked up two of her “children” because they killed one child. This was a personality shift, not just a morality change.

 

47 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

For all intents and purposes, Daenerys is a foreign leader at the head of a foreign army with flying WMDs.

 

That's not a "liberation" - that's an "invasion", and the people being invaded tend to not like that very much, even if they're not too fond of their current rulers *coughOperationIraqiFreedomcough*

 

I’m not arguing against any of that. This was even stated in one of the previous seasons that she looks like an invader with “foreign savages” or something similar.

[Bacon]

33 minutes ago, johnny said:

My friend who pretty much dislikes everything that’s considered good said he did NOT like this episode. Therefore, this was a good episode! 

  

Just for more info he also DESPISES the last Jedi! 

Since when were we friends? 

[fuckle85]

 

 

 

[johnny]

I’m naming my child Sandor 

[thewhyteboar]

 

[Mercury33]

6 hours ago, fuckle85 said:

Alright, this thread has me thinking a lot about the final two episodes now.  So, from Daenerys perspective and her goals and based on what we know about the political climate of King's Landing, what was most likely to have happened if, after the siege, she immediately captured Cersei, aired out her crimes (Bran could be consulted to find living witnesses) and publicly executes her under those charges before taking the throne?  Then she assigns Jon to rule with her, since he is the rightful heir to the throne?  Maybe he would be the face of the kingdom, and not required to do much, and she would be the actual ruler.  Assuming all of this went according to plan, what is most likely be the reaction from the kingdom?

 

She would never do that though. THAT is way more a random departure of her character than what she did in destroying the city last episode. 

[Mercury33]

6 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

 

She had a thing about not hurting innocents and “freeing” people. She was literally torching children. She locked up two of her “children” because they killed one child. This was a personality shift, not just a morality change.

 

She didn’t hear a child died and lock the dragons up on her own. Her advisors helped convince her to do it. 

[thewhyteboar]

I think if the show wasn't so compressed it would have allowed her to mourn her dragons and she would have realized that the reason Drogo was able to survive and grow the best was because he was the only dragon who wasn't chained up.

[Anathema-]

It's not a personality shift, it's a divergence from the path that we hoped she'd take. There are many easy reasons to see why she took the path she did, even if it's abhorrent. But that requires admitting that abhorrence was always within her and admitting you allowed yourself to be fooled by that is hard, but everything was consistent.

[legend]

11 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

So what?

 

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

 

No, I think it's madness too, because I don't see any strategic advantage to what she did. If her actions here are not her downfall by turning her remaining allies and all the north (who are loyal to Jon) against her, I'll be quite surprised.

 

It's madness because it was an act of malicious rage, not a strategic one. Indeed, it was strategically stupid and she still chose it.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

5 minutes ago, legend said:

 

No, I think it's madness too, because I don't see any strategic advantage to what she did. If her actions here are not her downfall by turning her remaining allies and all the north (who are loyal to Jon) against her, I'll be quite surprised.

 

It's madness because it was an act of malicious rage, not a strategic one. Indeed, it was strategically stupid and she still chose it.

That's a judgment that can only be rendered in hindsight.  

 

And even if it does result in her downfall, I maintain that it was a "strategic miscalculation" rather than an act of insanity.

[legend]

8 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

That's a judgment that can only be rendered in hindsight.  

 

And even if it does result in her downfall, I maintain that it was a "strategic miscalculation" rather than an act of insanity.

 

I don't think we need hindsight. In fact, the quality of decisions should *never* be evaluated by hindsight of the specific outcome that occurred. They are evaluated by the expected outcome given the information available. For example, if someone makes a stupid play in poker, but by sheer tiny luck it works out for them, their decision was still stupid and bad; they were just lucky.

 

Based on the information we have here, this is not a good decision.

 

 

But it's worse than that because we can't even just say it was a miscalculation. There was no calculus in Dany's decision. Prior to the moment, she was open to sparing them if the bells rang. But then we watch her when that moment comes. Her expression is not pensive; it's one of uncontrollable rage. And if you think I'm reaching, then you can watch the BTS where D&D explicitly describe it as her anger over having her world taken from her.

 

It was strategically stupid, and it was based on rage, not a miscalculation. Ergo, madness.

[Ghost_MH]

New ending prediction. Jon is going to do something stupid with hugely devastating results. I'm thinking, he kills Dany right in front of Drogon and, in her dying breath, she orders him to kill everyone. The only people left in all of Westeros are the Freefolk north of the battered wall. Everyone else dies.

[SimpleG]

3 hours ago, Mercury33 said:

 

She didn’t hear a child died and lock the dragons up on her own. Her advisors helped convince her to do it. 

No they didnt, she makes the call on her own

 

[SuperSpreader]

7 hours ago, thewhyteboar said:

 

I mean, Dany did exactly what Missandei's last wish was 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[thewhyteboar]

15 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

 

 

 

 

[eggydoo]

Coworker had a complete different interpretation of Arya horse scene which was pretty deep and he thought this is how it went:

 

He told me he was sad to see Arya die

I went, she didn't die.

He responds with, she didnt?  I totally thought that she died and the horse was sent by the Faceless God and she was off to go meet him.  (horse is the ferry boat to the afterlife.)

 

I was like...oooh that does sound neat, but you're giving the writers way too much credit to come up with something that deep.  

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Official: D&D's Star Wars project will be the first post-Rise of the Skywalker film.