Game of Thrones Seasons 7-8

[keg in kc]

About to hit the 5000 post mark on the old thread, the first season 7 trailer today seems like the right time to start the final Game of Thones thread.

I'm going back to the original rules pre-2015. I don't think we need supervision or bannings. Just don't be a dick. Post anything you find online that hasn't aired yet inside of spoiler tags. That's pretty much it. I think we can all handle that...





For future us, 2015 thread is here: Link

[Why Not?]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Man - episode 3 really soured some folks.

And to be fair, I hated episode 3 as well - hated it more and more as I thought on it. But episode 1 was fine. Episodes 2 and 4 I thought were quite good and this episode was the best of the season so far, IMO.

The Dany thing has been a long-time coming. And yeah, maybe that's more 'book insight' bleeding into show viewing, but Dany has always been an entitled, impulsive, violent trainwreck and a wholly unfit leader. I've said this for literally years - she's a spoiled tween with an air force when nobody else has one. She's narrow-minded and overly emotional. Her losing her shit and burning a bunch of stuff to the ground is easy to call and surely nobody would've argued with it had she torched the massed Lannister army and then burned down the red keep.

The only real curious event here is that she torched everything. But there are several historical analogues for it. And frankly, for all the shit B&W have (justifiably) taken for making character motivations non-existent, they did give you some insight here when they mentioned the contrast between Kings Landing and Mereen. When she was upset that they didn't rise up in support of her, she clearly put 'torch 'em all' on the table. The historical example that springs immediately to mind for me is the Armenian Genocide. The Ottomans decided that the Armenians didn't do enough to defend the region from the Christian invaders and if they weren't going to rise up against the enemy, then clearly they're no better than the enemy. The Turks then went on to effectively wholesale slaughter people who were ostensibly part of their own empire.

In the end I'm not sure Dany actively hoped to slaughter innocents - I think she simply didn't care much if she did, especially as she saw them as quasi-enemies anyway.

Apart from that, the Jaime/Tyrion meeting was fantastic. Euron v. Jaime was unnecessary but entertaining. Cleganebowl was everything we could've hoped it to be.

And in the end I think so much of this show has been demonstrating how little the rank and file care or benefit from these power struggles. They'll take peace under a bad ruler over a war to install a good ruler every time. Because in the end, the definition of a 'good' ruler is pretty damn fluid. I mean heck, in the recent history of Westoros it appears Robert Baratheon was actually pretty damn good at it by simply staying out of the way. And from a commoners perspective, Dany and her army is simply a foreign invasion. Which again makes what happened more 'to type'. Dany has no ties to King's Landing - she never knew the place. The Unsullied just see it as someplace else to conquer and the Dothraki just do what they do. Even the northmen are historically antagonistic towards anything south of the Riverlands (if they'll even tolerate that far).

I just don't understand the rage here. The soldiers acted as damn near every invading force in the history of warfare has acted (look at what the Germans did in Leningrad and the staggering barbarism from the Russians in Berlin that came about as a result). Most of the characters acted as you'd expect them to - even Jaime the Cersei Junkie.

This all comes down to just how much of Kings Landing Dany would've reasonably set ablaze. And I think the writers, over the course of several seasons and in her final conversation with Tyrion specifically, gave ample indication that she may just snap. When the Bells were ringing, it wasn't the bells that set her off. It was sitting there having wrecked creation but lost every person close to her on account of Cersei simply not capitulating when it was clearly the smart decision the first time they met, and thinking "wait...NOW you surrender? Get ****ed with that shit!" It was petulant, frustrated rage from a person who'd demonstrated a pretty decent track record of being petulant and wrathful.

I just don't see the problem here. I thought the episode was very good

[FAX]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

Is it just me or is it weird that bran just has been chilling all season? Like is that it for him? #GOT

— Patrick Mahomes II (@PatrickMahomes) May 13, 2019

Our football Savior is right. Bran has to warg into a dragon. Danerys, something along those lines. It's the only way to remove the Dragon, unsullied, dorthraki from threatening the people ever again in the future whats next in Westeros that we will never see. It's the only plot twist left to tie this all up in one episode.


That said, I expect more deaths of major characters including Jon to make that possible future happen.

I thought maybe he warged up that horse for Arya there at the end.

FAX

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Man - episode 3 really soured some folks.

And to be fair, I hated episode 3 as well - hated it more and more as I thought on it. But episode 1 was fine. Episodes 2 and 4 I thought were quite good and this episode was the best of the season so far, IMO.

The Dany thing has been a long-time coming. And yeah, maybe that's more 'book insight' bleeding into show viewing, but Dany has always been an entitled, impulsive, violent trainwreck and a wholly unfit leader. I've said this for literally years - she's a spoiled tween with an air force when nobody else has one. She's narrow-minded and overly emotional. Her losing her shit and burning a bunch of stuff to the ground is easy to call and surely nobody would've argued with it had she torched the massed Lannister army and then burned down the red keep.

The only real curious event here is that she torched everything. But there are several historical analogues for it. And frankly, for all the shit B&W have (justifiably) taken for making character motivations non-existent, they did give you some insight here when they mentioned the contrast between Kings Landing and Mereen. When she was upset that they didn't rise up in support of her, she clearly put 'torch 'em all' on the table. The historical example that springs immediately to mind for me is the Armenian Genocide. The Ottomans decided that the Armenians didn't do enough to defend the region from the Christian invaders and if they weren't going to rise up against the enemy, then clearly they're no better than the enemy. The Turks then went on to effectively wholesale slaughter people who were ostensibly part of their own empire.

In the end I'm not sure Dany actively hoped to slaughter innocents - I think she simply didn't care much if she did, especially as she saw them as quasi-enemies anyway.

Apart from that, the Jaime/Tyrion meeting was fantastic. Euron v. Jaime was unnecessary but entertaining. Cleganebowl was everything we could've hoped it to be.

And in the end I think so much of this show has been demonstrating how little the rank and file care or benefit from these power struggles. They'll take peace under a bad ruler over a war to install a good ruler every time. Because in the end, the definition of a 'good' ruler is pretty damn fluid. I mean heck, in the recent history of Westoros it appears Robert Baratheon was actually pretty damn good at it by simply staying out of the way. And from a commoners perspective, Dany and her army is simply a foreign invasion. Which again makes what happened more 'to type'. Dany has no ties to King's Landing - she never knew the place. The Unsullied just see it as someplace else to conquer and the Dothraki just do what they do. Even the northmen are historically antagonistic towards anything south of the Riverlands (if they'll even tolerate that far).

I just don't understand the rage here. The soldiers acted as damn near every invading force in the history of warfare has acted (look at what the Germans did in Leningrad and the staggering barbarism from the Russians in Berlin that came about as a result). Most of the characters acted as you'd expect them to - even Jaime the Cersei Junkie.

This all comes down to just how much of Kings Landing Dany would've reasonably set ablaze. And I think the writers, over the course of several seasons and in her final conversation with Tyrion specifically, gave ample indication that she may just snap. When the Bells were ringing, it wasn't the bells that set her off. It was sitting there having wrecked creation but lost every person close to her on account of Cersei simply not capitulating when it was clearly the smart decision the first time they met, and thinking "wait...NOW you surrender? Get ****ed with that shit!" It was petulant, frustrated rage from a person who'd demonstrated a pretty decent track record of being petulant and wrathful.

I just don't see the problem here. I thought the episode was very good

I certainly had less of an issue with this episode than I have with the previous two. We still have some ridiculous things going on (the scorpions suddenly being useless now that it's convenient to the plot, for example), but not in the huge volume that we saw in episodes 3 and 4.

I think the biggest issue with this one is just that we don't really have any easy way of seeing Dany's internal monologue. It would have made more sense if we'd seen a slow decline into insanity rather than just pouty scrunchy faces. And I still think that they completely went away from the "mad Dany" trajectory for the entirety of season 7.

But yeah, if you can get past that, I didn't think it was that bad.

[Bowser]

Game of Thrones fans coming back next week...

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by DaFace

I certainly had less of an issue with this episode than I have with the previous two. We still have some ridiculous things going on (the scorpions suddenly being useless now that it's convenient to the plot, for example), but not in the huge volume that we saw in episodes 3 and 4.

I think the biggest issue with this one is just that we don't really have any easy way of seeing Dany's internal monologue. It would have made more sense if we'd seen a slow decline into insanity rather than just pouty scrunchy faces. And I still think that they completely went away from the "mad Dany" trajectory for the entirety of season 7.

But yeah, if you can get past that, I didn't think it was that bad.

Which is a point I've been making this whole season because you could see it becoming a problem. I keep saying that this is going to be a struggle because you can't do inner monologue in a visual medium without hammering forward hours of tedious exposition. Which was, BTW, one of the criticisms of early-season GOTs which are now called perfection.

It was always going to be difficult to show her slowly coming apart (or even show the frayed edges early on). But I don't think B&W did nearly as much to hide the ball here as people are claiming. I think too many people were just a little too sold on "Dany, benevolent queen" than they should have been based on the events unfolding before us.

The Scorpions argument I think you can just try to say "hey, she got caught flat-footed and ****ed up". I mean how many of us said at the time "wait a minute - she's a hell of a lot more agile than a scorpion - why not circle and attack?" She did exactly what we said she could've/should've done the week prior. The only difference is she was ready for it this time - which history tells us can mean everything.

[Chiefspants]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Man - episode 3 really soured some folks.

And to be fair, I hated episode 3 as well - hated it more and more as I thought on it. But episode 1 was fine. Episodes 2 and 4 I thought were quite good and this episode was the best of the season so far, IMO.

The Dany thing has been a long-time coming. And yeah, maybe that's more 'book insight' bleeding into show viewing, but Dany has always been an entitled, impulsive, violent trainwreck and a wholly unfit leader. I've said this for literally years - she's a spoiled tween with an air force when nobody else has one. She's narrow-minded and overly emotional. Her losing her shit and burning a bunch of stuff to the ground is easy to call and surely nobody would've argued with it had she torched the massed Lannister army and then burned down the red keep.

The only real curious event here is that she torched everything. But there are several historical analogues for it. And frankly, for all the shit B&W have (justifiably) taken for making character motivations non-existent, they did give you some insight here when they mentioned the contrast between Kings Landing and Mereen. When she was upset that they didn't rise up in support of her, she clearly put 'torch 'em all' on the table. The historical example that springs immediately to mind for me is the Armenian Genocide. The Ottomans decided that the Armenians didn't do enough to defend the region from the Christian invaders and if they weren't going to rise up against the enemy, then clearly they're no better than the enemy. The Turks then went on to effectively wholesale slaughter people who were ostensibly part of their own empire.

In the end I'm not sure Dany actively hoped to slaughter innocents - I think she simply didn't care much if she did, especially as she saw them as quasi-enemies anyway.

Apart from that, the Jaime/Tyrion meeting was fantastic. Euron v. Jaime was unnecessary but entertaining. Cleganebowl was everything we could've hoped it to be.

And in the end I think so much of this show has been demonstrating how little the rank and file care or benefit from these power struggles. They'll take peace under a bad ruler over a war to install a good ruler every time. Because in the end, the definition of a 'good' ruler is pretty damn fluid. I mean heck, in the recent history of Westoros it appears Robert Baratheon was actually pretty damn good at it by simply staying out of the way. And from a commoners perspective, Dany and her army is simply a foreign invasion. Which again makes what happened more 'to type'. Dany has no ties to King's Landing - she never knew the place. The Unsullied just see it as someplace else to conquer and the Dothraki just do what they do. Even the northmen are historically antagonistic towards anything south of the Riverlands (if they'll even tolerate that far).

I just don't understand the rage here. The soldiers acted as damn near every invading force in the history of warfare has acted (look at what the Germans did in Leningrad and the staggering barbarism from the Russians in Berlin that came about as a result). Most of the characters acted as you'd expect them to - even Jaime the Cersei Junkie.

This all comes down to just how much of Kings Landing Dany would've reasonably set ablaze. And I think the writers, over the course of several seasons and in her final conversation with Tyrion specifically, gave ample indication that she may just snap. When the Bells were ringing, it wasn't the bells that set her off. It was sitting there having wrecked creation but lost every person close to her on account of Cersei simply not capitulating when it was clearly the smart decision the first time they met, and thinking "wait...NOW you surrender? Get ****ed with that shit!" It was petulant, frustrated rage from a person who'd demonstrated a pretty decent track record of being petulant and wrathful.

I just don't see the problem here. I thought the episode was very good

Good stuff.

[Sassy Squatch]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Which is a point I've been making this whole season because you could see it becoming a problem. I keep saying that this is going to be a struggle because you can't do inner monologue in a visual medium without hammering forward hours of tedious exposition. Which was, BTW, one of the criticisms of early-season GOTs which are now called perfection.

It was always going to be difficult to show her slowly coming apart (or even show the frayed edges early on). But I don't think B&W did nearly as much to hide the ball here as people are claiming. I think too many people were just a little too sold on "Dany, benevolent queen" than they should have been based on the events unfolding before us.

The Scorpions argument I think you can just try to say "hey, she got caught flat-footed and ****ed up". I mean how many of us said at the time "wait a minute - she's a hell of a lot more agile than a scorpion - why not circle and attack?" She did exactly what we said she could've/should've done the week prior. The only difference is she was ready for it this time - which history tells us can mean everything.

That's fine. Don't show Varys and friends going over their little board of toys explaining who has what forces left, including explicitly mentioning Euron and his fleet. Don't have her forces get blindsided by the same fleet twice beforehand. I know you don't think much of Daenerys, but thats just ridiculous plot induced stupidity.

[God of Thunder]

I think the White Walkers knew this was going to happen. Bran can see visions - and it stands to reason the Night King could see visions. I think they knew Dany was going to murder everyone, and were trying to prevent it - and failed.

[Jerm]

The biggest problem with the Dany turn for me was that they totally contradicted themselves in the episode itself.

She talks about "fear it is" or whatever....SHE HAD IT. The citizens of King's Landing were scurrying and scared shitless at the sight of Drogon.

The Lannister Army, who has fought no matter the circumstances, laid down their weapons because they were scared hearing the dragon and seeing the opposition. (We won't bring up the fact that they fought against the same army and dragon in Season 7, another contradiction but eh I'll let it go).

Dany had won...there was ZERO reason to go batshit insane and raze KL and kill all the innocents...totally goes against the character they had been building with her. But eh that's their MO for this season so I'm not shocked.

I read somewhere else last night that it was the fictional equivalent of Hiroshima being nuked and then the Allied powers being like nahhhh do it again...

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by God of Thunder

I think the White Walkers knew this was going to happen. Bran can see visions - and it stands to reason the Night King could see visions. I think they knew Dany was going to murder everyone, and were trying to prevent it - and failed.

Why would the White Walkers care if Dany murders everyone?

[GloucesterChief]

You can do the same basic plot and not have everybody hold the idiot ball.

[Chiefspants]

Originally Posted by Jerm

I read somewhere else last night that it was the fictional equivalent of Hiroshima being nuked and then the Allied powers being like nahhhh do it again...

Like Nagasaki?

[Sassy Squatch]

Originally Posted by GloucesterChief

You can do the same basic plot and not have everybody hold the idiot ball.

Exactly.

[Jerm]

Originally Posted by Chiefspants

Like Nagasaki?

LOL true but I think you get what I'm saying...

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Which is a point I've been making this whole season because you could see it becoming a problem. I keep saying that this is going to be a struggle because you can't do inner monologue in a visual medium without hammering forward hours of tedious exposition. Which was, BTW, one of the criticisms of early-season GOTs which are now called perfection.

It was always going to be difficult to show her slowly coming apart (or even show the frayed edges early on). But I don't think B&W did nearly as much to hide the ball here as people are claiming. I think too many people were just a little too sold on "Dany, benevolent queen" than they should have been based on the events unfolding before us.

The Scorpions argument I think you can just try to say "hey, she got caught flat-footed and ****ed up". I mean how many of us said at the time "wait a minute - she's a hell of a lot more agile than a scorpion - why not circle and attack?" She did exactly what we said she could've/should've done the week prior. The only difference is she was ready for it this time - which history tells us can mean everything.

Agree with ALOT of this. Nearly all of it. Dany turning heel hasn't phased me a bit, for all the reasons others have said. It's some of the other nonsense that has irritated me far more.

Still -- this season and the ending of the show isn't CRUSHINGLY AWFUL or anything. People are irritated at different things, and start to pig pile on to the point of ridiculous.

Spoiler!

But I really don't want King Bran. It just makes absolutely no sense at all