Game Of Thrones Season 8

[Spiteface]

I've been enjoying this truncated series of Medieval Tekken,

Soul Calibur?

[Alberon]

Why not just have Rhaegal killed during the battle and have the King's Landing folk cheer, why not one of the many ways this could have been satisfying?

That makes far more sense. One of the dragons gets taken down the other adapts and wipes the scorpions out. Dany flips out over the death and goes full tonto on King's Landing. It has the added benefit of not needing Urine Greyjoy at any point.

[dallasman]

I'm thirding that idea. Solves multiple problems, works dramatically, why didn't they think of that? Could it be that two dragons would've been twice as expensive? Rhaegal's death wasn't as impressive as some of the other dragon action, so maybe that was a quick way to save themselves a million dollars and a 100.000 hours' worth of drawing? It would've been a consideration at some point, but I don't know how big a difference it would've made in practical and budgetary terms, to animate both of them at KL. I don't understand CGI, tbh, and have just accepted that making a dog big on screen is apparently cutting edge and extremely costly.

[NoSleep]

I remember one of the two dragons looked mighty pregnant just before Rhaegal plummeted, not sure which one, so there might be some eggs lying at the bottom of the sea.

[Bingo Fury]

Why not just have Rhaegal killed during the battle and have the King's Landing folk cheer, why not one of the many ways this could have been satisfying?

Major issue solved with one stroke. This is one of the smartest comments I've read in the past six days.

[dallasman]

I think they should just set up as many possible futures as possible, planting some dragon eggs here, some strangely mutilated corpses there, and having Arya sail west. The Game will have to be decided now, but I think everyone but the most dedicated haters would like to leave the world of the show with a sense that it continues to exist. After the big drama has played out, they're gonna wanna tug at our few remaining heartstrings, so I hope we close on something akin to the Six Feet Under finale, rather than one character decapitating another in a smoldering ruin.

[Mister Six]

*Frey is established as duplicitous and only concerned with what benefits him  This line leapt out at me and made me wonder whether you were also being duplicitous and self serving, disingenuous or just reductive.  Frey is, of course.  But who isn't?  Robb?  Cat?  Bolton?  Cersei?  Jaime?  Tywin?  Tyrion?  Arya?  Sansa?  They're all duplicitous and self serving.  Even Ned was, in terms of Jon, and in terms of writing King Robert's will. 

This is the point where I have to throw up my hands and just sack all this off. They make a point of saying that Frey is particularly untrustworthy, and he is dealing with the Starks, who are shown as being extremely loyal and bound by duty (which is why Robb's shirking of his duty to marry Frey's daughter is pointed out in dialogue as a huge aberration, and a possible source of dissent among the troops). He's portrayed as slimy, sef-serving and not event particularly interested in the welfare of his many wives and children.

You seem to be in the habit of ignoring context where it suits you, which is either you being deliberately disingenuous or a defect of perception that would explain why you were satisfied with the patchy plotting and empty characterisation of this last season - you're picking up on the bullet points and the absence of the stuff in between doesn't register.

[MiddleRabbit]

This is the point where I have to throw up my hands and just sack all this off. They make a point of saying that Frey is particularly untrustworthy, and he is dealing with the Starks, who are shown as being extremely loyal and bound by duty (which is why Robb's shirking of his duty to marry Frey's daughter is pointed out in dialogue as a huge aberration, and a possible source of dissent among the troops). He's portrayed as slimy, sef-serving and not event particularly interested in the welfare of his many wives and children.

You seem to be in the habit of ignoring context where it suits you, which is either you being deliberately disingenuous or a defect of perception that would explain why you were satisfied with the patchy plotting and empty characterisation of this last season - you're picking up on the bullet points and the absence of the stuff in between doesn't register.

If you like.

I might be missing things, I wouldn't rule it out, it's always a possibility.

However, the same thing applies to you, doesn't it?  They did make a point of explicitly pointing out Frey's duplicitousness and self-serving behaviour, yes.  What was implicit was  Robb's similar behaviour.  He sent 2000 men to their death as a feint, he broke his house's fealty to the crown because his father confessed to being a traitor and  he reneged on his agreement to marry a Frey which did have serious repercussion, even more so than anybody expected. Now who's slimy, self-serving and not particularly interested in the welfare of his own family and supporters?   

It's a bit like Syrio Forrell's instructions to Arya, when he told her he'd go left but he went right.  She said, that's not fair, he told her, "You looked but you did not see."  Meaning, she was too busy paying attention to his misdirection to notice what was happening in front of her. 

And that might be what you've done.  You've got Frey down - accurately - as one thing and Robb down as another.  What's the difference?  Frey was explicitly described as such (by Starks) and Robb was only implied as such.  In the context of the story, Starks don't like Freys much and denigrate them.  Starks are protagonists and Freys are antagonists, if we're looking at traditional characterisation.  Game Of Thrones has shown us that characters can be shades of grey.  The House of Black & White is perhaps symbolic of the Faceless Men's black and white attitude to everything.  Everyone else - pretty much - is rather more complicated than that.

My perspective is that the characterisation hasn't been hollow this season and the plotting hasn't been patchy.  It's what the characters experience and what these experiences do to them that provides the stuff between the bullet points.  But you have to pay attention. It's not John Le Carre but neither is it Peppa Pig.

It's all there to see, but there's also been misdirection and things have been implied while something else has been held up to distract us.  I'm not making any leaps of logic but I have thought about what's going on.

Take your post, you start off saying that 'This is the point where I have to throw my hands up and just sack this off.'  And then you do the opposite of that.  You tell me where you're going and then you go somewhere else.  This is what life's like, isn't it?  People say one thing and then do something different. 

Like Danaerys, like Jaime, like Robb, like everybody pretty much.  Like you, too.

[Bingo Fury]

Well, much as I've obsessed over Game of Thrones, I think eight seasons is probably enough for me, and I already seem to be in the process of letting it go. My biggest regret about the imminent final episode is, to my surprise, never being able to see how Sansa develops from here. Jon's fate will be tied up in the overall denouement somehow. Danaerys is bound to die. Arya's destiny shouldn't take long to tie up. But it's only recently that I've started to find Sansa one of the more interesting characters, and there's only one and a half hours left of the show to see her strut her stuff and get an idea of what kind of a Lady (or queen?) she's going to be. After years of rooting for Tyrion and Arya, I wasn't expecting to have that on my mind on the eve of the final episode.

[BritishHobo]

For all the talk about how there could be eleven or twelve seasons, and how Dan and David are only ending it so soon to go make Star Wars, I'm pretty satisfied with the length. Every year on here I'd say that I didn't feel there was much left, and that I'd happily have them wrap it up sooner rather than later. I don't believe the daft plot decisions would be solved by having more episodes, and I think dragging the end out further would have been just as bad a situation. Things were already dragging in seasons six and seven.

I've not hated this season. The odd thing has needled me, and I would have liked the white walkers to have covered two or three episodes, blending with the battle for the throne rather than standing separate - but I think the character interaction has been lovely and engaging as ever. I am gonna miss these characters. No matter how shit things may get in this finale, the show has earned that, not just by using good source material, but by making it a fucking stellar TV show through their own talents. And when King Stannis rides across the charred remains of King's Landing and finag takes his rightful place on the Iron Throne as we've all long known he would, and the show fades to credits for the final time, I'm really going to miss it.

[Thomas]

Whatever our competing feelings on pace and characterisation, we can all agree that the much-dreaded winter was mercifully brief for the people of Westeros. Phew!

[Dr Sanchez]

Whatever our competing feelings on pace and characterisation, we can all agree that the much-dreaded winter was mercifully brief for the people of Westeros. Phew!

Gods be good!

I heard the people of Kings Landing had a scorcher last week.

[Mister Six]

It's about sociological versus psychological storytelling, apparently.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/

Having finally read this, I think it's pretty convincing. The big strength of the show when it began was its sense of place and consequence. It was clear how their various societies, beliefs and families had shaped them, and how they themselves affected their homelands in turn. The decisions made by Ned, Robb, Stannis et al had clear consequences for the nation and their homelands. Locations weren't just pretty backdrops for human drama, but were living, breathing entities in of themselves.

By the end of the show all but two kingdoms had ceased to exist as far as the narrative was concerned (who was in charge of the Stormlands between Stannis dying and Gendry being recognised by Dany? Who was in charge of Veilgarden after the Queen of Thorns drank poison? Nobody, because they disappeared into the ether), and their clash was secondary to the personal dramas of their leaders.

I mean, Christ, just look at the intro sequence - it used to show off the scale of the drama, the Titanic struggles of kings and empire-builders... This season it's just Wall - Winterfell - King's Landing. Everywhere else has just ceased to exist.

[BritishHobo]

Whatever our competing feelings on pace and characterisation, we can all agree that the much-dreaded winter was mercifully brief for the people of Westeros. Phew!

Gods be good!

I heard the people of Kings Landing had a scorcher last week.

I have been meaning to ask about this, because I was starting to wonder if I'd got it wrong. The point of winter coming is meant to be that it's all of Westeros, right? Not just Winterfell, which is already bollock-cold anyway? Or have I misunderstood all along?

[Dex Sawash]

I have been meaning to ask about this, because I was starting to wonder if I'd got it wrong. The point of winter coming is meant to be that it's all of Westeros, right? Not just Winterfell, which is already bollock-cold anyway? Or have I misunderstood all along?

Nuclear Dragon-winter in KL

[BritishHobo]

Was alright that.

[Dex Sawash]

Was alright that.

Until the small coucil meeting

[BritishHobo]

I dunno - the comedy was a bit daft, but I thought it was sweet. I was pretty satisfied overall.

[Mr_Simnock]

Not a bad ending tbh, better than I was expecting based on rumors I have read.

[Dr Sanchez]

Predictable drawn out shite.

Thank fuck it's over.

[kidsick5000]

Great ending. Feels great to be wrong-footed by the makers not going for any of the grand theories.
Seriously stuck the landing.

[Hey, Punk!]

Sam chronicles it all in a big book.

Just gonna chuck a little +1 at you.

[NoSleep]

Yet another shit king.

[NoSleep]

Sansa declares Nexit and Arya goes off to discover America (although I always thought there were American parallels in the world of Westeros).

[wooders1978]

Brianne of Cuck

[Gulftastic]

Loved the poncey dress uniform of tosser lad from the Vale.

And Edmure's attempt to nominate himself as King. Sit down, you silly man. His sword tangling in his chair got a laugh from me.

[Swoz_MK]

Big lizard nearly made me cry, wonderful big bugger.

[BritishHobo]

I will say that all the major conclusions were done with no real sense of imagination. After the bafflingly low-key endings for the Night King and Cersei, Daenerys getting stabbed felt like a fairly 'yeah whatever' ending.

And I'm not sure what really came of Arya, especially with all the faceless man stuff. She was just hanging around King's Landing really, then she left.

It definitely was a flawed season, but overall it came to a good, satisfying end, and given how tedious things had gotten in both the books and the show, I can forgive a bit of rushing.

[NoSleep]

Looked like they've set up for a few spin-offs.

[Thursday]

I'd agree with the sentiment of "yeah that was alright, could have been worse" I'd seen a couple of the leaks anyway. With Bran I was thinking "really?" I'm not really convinced everyone would be okay with that. The other lords and ladies accepting Bran. The hordes of Dothraki and Unsullied being okay with Jon's punishment being "he has to go to the night's watch" which surely they'd have no concept of.

I think part of the problem is Bran's actor just isn't quite good enough, but then it's sort of an impossible task, picking a child actor for a role that seems kind of secondary, but then becomes very important. They lucked out enough with Arya and Sansa.

It was also annoying early on that nobody seemed to specifically challenge the statement "Dany had no choice" with "What the hell are you talking about, they'd surrendered?" But at least Jon did the deed soon enough, after his weird apologism for it early on.

But yeah I felt quite happy with the endings for most of the characters, so it left me with a satisfied feeling.