Game Of Thrones Season 8

[Dr Sanchez]

I don't understand how anyone can stick up for this literal shit show anymore.

I can see how some people are enjoying it for the brainless romp it has become but to stand by the writers and claim that the show is just as good as ever or that it even makes sense anymore is mental.

[MiddleRabbit]

I disagree with virtually everything you've written but I'll just focus on the bolded. First, the idea of the human shield is patently nonsense as it has no effect on Cersei or Dany or anything at all, yet it so easily could have. That's the frustration - that things are set up, narrative decisions are made, but then it's half-arsed. It's not that Cersei's "clever" plan didn't work, it's that the writers' plan didn't work.

The Ned and Red Wedding examples are not the same kind of rushed as what's being ascribed to this season. Ned's death is set up through the whole first season, you just don't realise it at the time. The series could have ended at the end of season one and it would have worked - it's a whole story, Ned's death is inevitable. The speed with which the scene turns isn't rushed, it's designed to turn your stomach. What we're getting this season is just a truncated series of "big moments" with nothing of substance in between to make it believable.

Ned's death wasn't inevitable though.  That's why it was a surprise.  You could say with the benefit of hindsight that you can see how and why it happened but inevitable it wasn't.  Foreshadowed, yes but that's not the same thing.

The Red Wedding wasn't inevitable either and nor was it a slow burn.  Cat set up Rob's betrothal, Rob met someone else and welshed on it and the attempt to make up for it with Edmure didn't work.  That was it.  Frey was always seen as being self serving but there was no suggestion that he was the sort of person who'd commit mass murder just for a perceived slight.  Which, again, was what made it shocking.

Similarly the human shield was just another plan that didn't work.  Put it with Viserys marrying Dany to get an army, Ned's piece of paper, Edmure's wedding, Stannis burning Shireen, Jaime's rescue of daughter and all the rest of the failed plans in the show (and books).

It's a big theme, isn't it it?  The best laid plans...

I dig it that you're not buying it and fair dos, but there's a strong case for everything that appears to now be an issue with it isn't all that different to anything that's previously been a strength for the show.  I've always found it fairly daft, myself, but not for any of the reasons I've read about here.

Different strokes, I suppose.

[NoSleep]

The Red Wedding wasn't inevitable either and nor was it a slow burn.

Not sure about that. It had been made inevitable by Robb's actions and thus Frey's altered allegiances. The fact that it brutally flew in the face of the the old "true love" trope was an aside to how seriously Robb had practically fucked up.

[Noonling]

This series is poo and bum.

Its not all awful - I actually quite liked Cersei and Jaime dying in a rather measly way together, I liked Jon standing around thinking "wtf" after all the soldiers stop being honourable, and of course the conversation between Jaime and Tyrion. And...Hm, I think that might be about it.

If they had taken longer over the series then they could have hit all the same plot points and it could be satisfying. Yes, Dany has always been a lil crazy, but a couple more scenes in this episode could have helped it seem more realistic that she burnt the entire city - otherwise I can kinda imagine her burning a couple of streets and coming to her senses. A couple of scenes with Arya and The Hound on the road that could make it more sense that her lifelong passion for killing Cersei could be dissuaded by a single line from The Hound.
More of Varys plotting, and doing so less stupidly "Hey Jon, I know we're on an open beach surrounded by others, but have you ever thought of becoming king instead of that Dany bitch?", but still allowing himself to be killed by Drogon. Perhaps even his letters say "by the time you receive this I will have been burnt to a crisp, thats how well I know Dany."


My genuine ideal ending, which can't be fit into one episode:
- To come full circle, Jon declares Dany a traitor to the realm, and as he who passes the sentence should swing the sword, beheads Dany - just like Ned beheads a deserter in episode 1. He's very sad about it etc. Obviously this requires quite a set up, as he would have to have major support for such an act.
- Tyrion, being more of a schemer than Jon, reluctantly accepts being Hand of the King (just like Ned did episode 1)
- Arya becomes a wandering assassin, helping the common folk when they need it, or carrying out the occasional assassination Tyrion reckons is needed, no questions asked. Or, becomes a kinda bodyguard to Jon, like The Hound was for Joffrey in season 1.
- Jon either gives the North more freedom, or allows for the North to become a separate kingdom entirely, with Sansa as the Queen.
- Someone seems like they could be a threat to the throne, implying the whole nasty cycle could start again in a few years. Everyone's been killed off though, so its kinda hard now. I guess during Jon's coronation we meet whatever minor names are left of Higharden, Dorne etc, and they have a scheming look in their eyes.
- Bran falls out of another window and dies

[lebowskibukowski]

My genuine ideal ending, which can't be fit into one episode:
- To come full circle, Jon declares Dany a traitor to the realm, and as he who passes the sentence should swing the sword, beheads Dany - just like Ned beheads a deserter in episode 1. He's very sad about it etc. Obviously this requires quite a set up, as he would have to have major support for such an act.
- Tyrion, being more of a schemer than Jon, reluctantly accepts being Hand of the King (just like Ned did episode 1)
- Arya becomes a wandering assassin, helping the common folk when they need it, or carrying out the occasional assassination Tyrion reckons is needed, no questions asked. Or, becomes a kinda bodyguard to Jon, like The Hound was for Joffrey in season 1.
- Jon either gives the North more freedom, or allows for the North to become a separate kingdom entirely, with Sansa as the Queen.
- Someone seems like they could be a threat to the throne, implying the whole nasty cycle could start again in a few years. Everyone's been killed off though, so its kinda hard now. I guess during Jon's coronation we meet whatever minor names are left of Higharden, Dorne etc, and they have a scheming look in their eyes.
- Bran falls out of another window and dies

I don't think that you will be far wrong with all of this but, judging by this season, I reckon that they could fit all this into the first 15 minutes.

[phantom_power]

Everyone is seeing defeating Dany as simply having her killed but the problem is she has a massive army that is loyal only to her and won't necessarily switch sides just because someone else has declared themselves ruler like everyone else does.

[Noonling]

Yep, with the Unsullied and the remaining Dothraki it would have to be a sneaky kill. Dothraki would never follow anyone else, but I guess you could argue the Unsullied could have a change of heart after the slaughter of innocent commoners, like they once were. A change of heart couldn't be fit properly into an episode though, so either a sneaky kill or an incredibly hamfisted "Actually we think Dany is bad now." twist.

[Norton Canes]

Everyone is seeing defeating Dany as simply having her killed but the problem is she has a massive army that is loyal only to her and won't necessarily switch sides just because someone else has declared themselves ruler like everyone else does

Er!

Anyway clearly leading up to Arya dispatching Danerys but her legions would remain loyal and of course she'd still have Drogon so I reckon it's more likely she'll be convinced of the error of her ways and fly off into the arid wastelands of Essos, leaving Sansa to devolve power among the Kingdoms

A change of heart couldn't be fit properly into an episode though

Yeah, cos nothing has been crow-barred in this season... they've got at least an hour (not sure how long the final episode is), plenty enough time.

Jon: You know what you've done, don't you.
Danerys: What?
Jon: You've let the Unsullied down, you've let the Dothraki down - but most of all... 

[NoSleep]

Yep, with the Unsullied and the remaining Dothraki it would have to be a sneaky kill. Dothraki would never follow anyone else, but I guess you could argue the Unsullied could have a change of heart after the slaughter of innocent commoners, like they once were. A change of heart couldn't be fit properly into an episode though, so either a sneaky kill or an incredibly hamfisted "Actually we think Dany is bad now." twist.

The Dothraki have a tradition of following whoever defeats their leader (I think, might be wrong). The Unsullied are free to decide what they will; they were given the choice to leave Daenerys as soon as she "bought" them.

[Hat FM]

- To come full circle, Jon declares Dany a traitor to the realm, and as he who passes the sentence should swing the sword, beheads Dany - just like Ned beheads a deserter in episode 1. He's very sad about it etc. Obviously this requires quite a set up, as he would have to have major support for such an act.

Drogon sees this, tries to burn john. he's fine cos he's a targ. see ya later mate.

I'm convinced either way that john will walk out of a fire at some point.

[Alberon]

The Unsullied and Dothraki aren't a problem as Stannis' forces can mop them up when he arrives.

[phantom_power]

Er!

I didn't mean literally everybody

[Norton Canes]

That's literally fine

[MiddleRabbit]

Not sure about that. It had been made inevitable by Robb's actions and thus Frey's altered allegiances. The fact that it brutally flew in the face of the the old "true love" trope was an aside to how seriously Robb had practically fucked up.

I realise we're sort of debating what 'inevitable' means here.  It means 'unavoidable', doesn't it?  And I don't see how it was unavoidable.  They could have assassinated Lord Frey, they could have not bothered trying to make amends, they could have done lots of things that would have avoided the Red Wedding.  Guest right was the big deal, wasn't it?  Was it inevitable that Frey would trample over that?  I don't think it was.

Had it been inevitable, people would have seen it coming because that's what inevitable means.  And they didn't.  People were shocked - viewers and the characters for various reasons.  People aren't shocked by the inevitable because, well, that's what inevitable means.

Round and round, eh? 

[NoSleep]

Audiences were perhaps more shocked because they had been blindsided to Robb's lack of duty. It taught the audience something about the world that had been withheld up to that point. The only previous indications of how things should be were the existing marriages (Ned and Catelyn, Robert & Cersei) and how Sansa and Daenerys were being treated by their families to create alliances by their marriages. Catelyn said, quite a few times, that Frey was not to be fucked with. Once we knew that the Roose Bolton and Tywin were behind it, too (more blindsiding) there was an inevitability to the outcome (just like a surprise attack might inevitably succeed).

After that it was better understood (by the audience) how things were run in Westeros, regarding high-born marriage.

[colacentral]

I realise we're sort of debating what 'inevitable' means here.  It means 'unavoidable', doesn't it?

I wasn't going to go round in circles by arguing back against you saying that Ned's death wasn't inevitable earlier but since you've said this, I think it's just that we have crossed wires. I mean it's inevitable in the sense of where the narrative wants to go - he has to die for the story to work. It's about him being honest and good to a fault and as soon as he thinks he can meddle in a world that's dishonest, he's doomed. So that narrative momentum is quite clearly there in hindsight (it can be both "inevitable" and unpredictable - you can't always see what the story is actually about until the ending), as opposed to the major events of this season which are being leapfrogged between with no build up.

[sevendaughters]

When I watched the first few series not knowing a tap about the books, I was shocked by Ned's death and the Red Wedding because it made me feel stupid for having that traditional hope of a saviour despite the text telling me constantly that these guys are fucked and their dumbass honour fucked them.

[NoSleep]

In Robb's case, dishonour.

[Mister Six]

(Deep breath)

Okay, let's do this. Although not in chronological order.

I realise we're sort of debating what 'inevitable' means here.  It means 'unavoidable', doesn't it?  And I don't see how it was unavoidable. ... Had it been inevitable, people would have seen it coming because that's what inevitable means. 

You're giving two definitions of inevitable here, and neither one is correct (the first one, in a narrative sense, the second one at all).

An inevitable ending to a story doesn't mean there's literally no way any of it could have been affected, only that given the characters, their motivations, their weaknesses and their circumstances, a different ending would have been unsatisfying and unconvincing. Joffrey could have decided to follow his mum's advice. Romeo could have dumped Juliet. Othello could have just sat down and had an open and honest chat about his relationship with Desdemona, and realised he was being had. The fact that the characters have free will doesn't preclude the inevitability of the narrative; the story, in order to work, has to end a certain way; the characters, in order to remain true to themselves, have to choose the worse of two options. That's inevitable.

And no, inevitability does not mean predictability. The strength of the Red Wedding and Ned's beheading (my favourite Half Man Half Biscuit B-side) is that they come as a shock in that moment because most other shows would not kill off the two main male characters in the story and allow the bad guys to win, but looking back it's quite clear that's where this was headed. Robb was warned not to marry whatserface because his men wouldn't like it; the importance of him marrying Walder Frey's daughter to build a strong alliance against the Lannisters was clear. Ned was told that he wasn't suited to King's Landing; he was told not to have mercy; he was told that he should be ruthless - and yet he confronted Cersei to give her the chance to escape, when she was clearly the sort to stand her ground (not to mention having the ear of the city guards).

This Dany heel turn, on the other hand, was a surprise because it just didn't really make much sense, psychologically, in the moment. Of course Joffrey was going to order Ned's hed off, the violent, impulsive, uppity little shit that he was; of course Frey was going to turn on Robb, the scheming, loathsome, unloved turd that he was. It was shocking because it didn't fit the narrative conventions we were used to, but not because it was psychologically implausible, especially with what had been established about those two characters in the preceding ten or so episodes.

But Dany burning to death a bunch of peasants in a city that had just surrendered, rather than killing Cersei and claiming the throne she always wanted.... and waiting for the bell to ring before doing it? Because... why? Yes, in the preceding, ooh, hour of footage she's lost her advisors, had a crap party, lost her best friend and said something about ruling by fear, but none of this stuff is strung together in a plausible or believable way. Whereas Ned losing his head and Robb getting the chop both instantaneously made sense, and were preceded by a growing sense of anxiety, Dany's rampage only makes sense if you pick through the scattered bones of the previous episodes on a message board days later, and was preceded by her staring at the bell tower while my wife and I said "What is everyone waiting for?"

And I'd accept that was our fault if we were in the minority there, but we are very clearly not.

George RR's writing is the issue if the problem is that the show went down the swanny when the source material dried up.

Uh, how do you get that? "GRRM's writing is the problem because he wasn't involved in any of the bad writing" is Bizarro logic. Are you Benioff or Weiss's mum or something?

Which is what I was responding to.  Edmure and the Riverlands did return after Dorne though, along with the Blackfish.

For one or two episodes, at the end of which Edmure was only briefly glimpsed again and the Blackfish died offscreen. A totally ignoble and narratively unsatisfying way to end what appeared to be, at the start of season three, a significant subplot. It also pissed all over Jamie's redemptive plot with the weird rapey Cersei scene that everyone involve swore wasn't rape, but everyone who watched it went "Oooh, no..."

Jaime going to rescue his daughter from people who turned out to be his enemies was, in terms of plot and his tendency to do what Cersei told him, entirely in keeping with all of it.

Except the point of his character arc at that point (with the Riverlands arc) was his growing discomfort with doing what his family expected of him, and with blindly following orders. In terms of plot, it was like an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, with everyone sneaking about in unconvincing disguises, infiltrating palaces with ease and so on. I'd totally forgotten what "bad pussy" referred to, but that's another sign of some planned Dorne subplots that just got binned because Benioff and Weiss had no idea of how to integrate those characters into the rest of the story.

In Westeros, she did everything herself at great cost and they didn't love her for it.  By the time she arrived at KL, she'd worked that out.  If the small folk weren't going to overthrow Cersei and welcome her with open arms, then fuck 'em was what she thought.

Which is fine, but it's absolutely not established well enough in the previous scenes that it can be sold in the moment.

I think George RR's evident issues in reaching some sort of end for the whole thing (since 1991, when he apparently started writing it) speaks volumes.  He's had twenty eight years to work it out and it doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon.

I don't know why you keep bringing him up, when he's got nothing to do with the end of this series. If it was impossible to end satisfyingly as a TV show then Benioff and Weiss are as culpable in this as you want GRRM to be. Even more so, in fact, since they're the ones who pitched the show, and knew how long the fucking books were taking to come out.

The show cut a lot out, which it had to really.

Yes, but it cut too much, and the wrong parts, and by the end it had too few characters and subplots to sustain the show, but too much of the main plot to cover to cut it down as much as B&W did. As I said, they should have taken a year's break after season four and plotted out in tedious detail exactly how the next X years were going to unfold. As it was, they tried to press on, realised too late they didn't have a plan, and then shat their bed and tried to compress everything into too small a timeframe.

Dany's might have gone mad, or maybe she hasn't.  She's not being much of a benevolent messiah, that much is true.  But it's not happened over two episodes, her tendency to crush those who don't do what she tells them has been here since the start.  As I've said, the people who advised her to ignore those tendencies are either dead, have advised her to do things that resulted in poor outcomes, or have usurped her in the popularity stakes.  She's gone from being everybody's heroine to being some foreigner who thinks she's it because everybodyl loves Jon Snow, who won't nob her anymore because she's his auntie and - even worse - has a better claim to the throne than her.

But all of the stuff I've put in bold DID happen over the course of two episodes, and that's the bit that's important when you're trying to sell the heel turn of a character who's been farting rainbows for the best part of nine years. I don't much like Dany, and haven't since about season two, but even I didn't believe in that massacre.

I don't understand why you're so desperate to get B&W off the hook or - failing that - roll out some GRRM whataboutism.

[MiddleRabbit]

(Deep breath)

Okay, let's do this. Although not in chronological order.

You're giving two definitions of inevitable here, and neither one is correct (the first one, in a narrative sense, the second one at all).

An inevitable ending to a story doesn't mean there's literally no way any of it could have been affected, only that given the characters, their motivations, their weaknesses and their circumstances, a different ending would have been unsatisfying and unconvincing. Joffrey could have decided to follow his mum's advice. Romeo could have dumped Juliet. Othello could have just sat down and had an open and honest chat about his relationship with Desdemona, and realised he was being had. The fact that the characters have free will doesn't preclude the inevitability of the narrative; the story, in order to work, has to end a certain way; the characters, in order to remain true to themselves, have to choose the worse of two options. That's inevitable.

OED definition:
inevitable
ADJECTIVE

1. Certain to happen; unavoidable.
'war was inevitable'

If you're going to say that the authorial intent determines inevitability and that the characters have to choose the worst of two options then that doesn't make any sense to me.  Why do they have to choose the worst option?  Who decided that one?   What you might be talking about is dramatic irony.  The audience might recognise that a course of action isn't necessarily a good one but the characters don't necessarily.

'Inevitability' in terms of fictional plotting isn't true either.  George RR has changed his mind about most of it.  There's a plan he wrote in the mid 90s that involve all manner of things that he decided against.  It's inevitable that whatever he writes will be the end, but that's not what we're talking about.  Or at least, it's not what I'm talking about.

And no, inevitability does not mean predictability. The strength of the Red Wedding and Ned's beheading (my favourite Half Man Half Biscuit B-side) is that they come as a shock in that moment because most other shows would not kill off the two main male characters in the story and allow the bad guys to win, but looking back it's quite clear that's where this was headed. Robb was warned not to marry whatserface because his men wouldn't like it; the importance of him marrying Walder Frey's daughter to build a strong alliance against the Lannisters was clear. Ned was told that he wasn't suited to King's Landing; he was told not to have mercy; he was told that he should be ruthless - and yet he confronted Cersei to give her the chance to escape, when she was clearly the sort to stand her ground (not to mention having the ear of the city guards).

If something's inevitable it does mean it's predictable.  What it doesn't mean is that any/all of the characters will necessarily predict it because characters that are true to life are fallible, especially as regards things concerning themselves.  Rob and co couldn't have predicted the Red Wedding because if they had, they wouldn't have gone.  The readers/watchers were also unlikely to have predicted that either due to Guest Right, due to Frey being a coward who never stuck his neck out, due to lots of reasons.  It was surprising and practically nobody predicted it.  Does that prevent it being inevitable?  I would suggest that, to all intents and purposes, in a literary sense: yes it does.

This Dany heel turn, on the other hand, was a surprise because it just didn't really make much sense, psychologically, in the moment. Of course Joffrey was going to order Ned's hed off, the violent, impulsive, uppity little shit that he was; of course Frey was going to turn on Robb, the scheming, loathsome, unloved turd that he was. It was shocking because it didn't fit the narrative conventions we were used to, but not because it was psychologically implausible, especially with what had been established about those two characters in the preceding ten or so episodes.

The Red Wedding was a shock, Dany's immolation of KL was a surprise.  Yes.  It made sense to me, psychologically.  Joffrey?  Yeah, I agree.  Frey?  No, I don't, because he was chickenshit and the audience were kept entirely in the dark about Frey's alliance with the Lannisters, which was the only reason he was brave enough to go through with it.  If your problem is lack of signposting Dany's descent into whatever it was that lead to her pyromania, there's a far bigger issue with Frey's alliance with the Lannisters being kept a secret until it was too late.  It might have been inevitable but nobody, character or viewer could have worked that out.  The secret alliance at the Red Wedding was the epitome of Deus Ex Machina and everybody loved it.

But Dany burning to death a bunch of peasants in a city that had just surrendered, rather than killing Cersei and claiming the throne she always wanted.... and waiting for the bell to ring before doing it? Because... why? Yes, in the preceding, ooh, hour of footage she's lost her advisors, had a crap party, lost her best friend and said something about ruling by fear, but none of this stuff is strung together in a plausible or believable way. Whereas Ned losing his head and Robb getting the chop both instantaneously made sense, and were preceded by a growing sense of anxiety, Dany's rampage only makes sense if you pick through the scattered bones of the previous episodes on a message board days later, and was preceded by her staring at the bell tower while my wife and I said "What is everyone waiting for?"

And I'd accept that was our fault if we were in the minority there, but we are very clearly not.

Uh, how do you get that? "GRRM's writing is the problem because he wasn't involved in any of the bad writing" is Bizarro logic. Are you Benioff or Weiss's mum or something?

If it only made sense after reading what other people wrote on message boards, how did the people on message boards work it out?  That's your problem, isn't it?  Once you accept that other people worked it out and you didn't, you're leaving yourself open to the suggestion that some people were paying closer attention than you were.  Just because a majority of people think a thing, it doesn't make them right, does it?  And no, I'm nobody's mum.  I do pay attention though.  What was everybody waiting for?  I think she was waiting for the citizens to drag Cersei out for her.  Or she was waiting for Cersei to come out and prostrate herself at her feet.  Neither of those things happened and she thought - "Fuck you then.  The lot of you."

For one or two episodes, at the end of which Edmure was only briefly glimpsed again and the Blackfish died offscreen. A totally ignoble and narratively unsatisfying way to end what appeared to be, at the start of season three, a significant subplot. It also pissed all over Jamie's redemptive plot with the weird rapey Cersei scene that everyone involve swore wasn't rape, but everyone who watched it went "Oooh, no..."

Except the point of his character arc at that point (with the Riverlands arc) was his growing discomfort with doing what his family expected of him, and with blindly following orders. In terms of plot, it was like an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, with everyone sneaking about in unconvincing disguises, infiltrating palaces with ease and so on. I'd totally forgotten what "bad pussy" referred to, but that's another sign of some planned Dorne subplots that just got binned because Benioff and Weiss had no idea of how to integrate those characters into the rest of the story.

Which is fine, but it's absolutely not established well enough in the previous scenes that it can be sold in the moment.

You mentioned Romeo and Juliet earlier.  They suffer ignoble deaths.  Lady Macbeth dies offstage, ignobly.  Maybe you don't like it, but it doesn't necessarily make it bad writing when it happens.

Why does a character arc have to be unrealistic?  Jaime, for instance.  Think of a smack addict.  A smacked realises that smack's bad for them and tries to give up and then slips back into old habits.  That wouldn't be bad writing, would it?  That would be realistic writing.  How is Jaime going back to that which is bad for him indicative of a poorly written character arc?  If you ask me, it's much more realistic than everybody learning valuable lessons about themselves that they never go back on, a la Disney.  And it is absolutely fine because some people have been paying attention and talking about it on message boards.

Bad Pussy was piss poor dialogue, yeah.

I don't know why you keep bringing him up, when he's got nothing to do with the end of this series. If it was impossible to end satisfyingly as a TV show then Benioff and Weiss are as culpable in this as you want GRRM to be. Even more so, in fact, since they're the ones who pitched the show, and knew how long the fucking books were taking to come out.

Yes, but it cut too much, and the wrong parts, and by the end it had too few characters and subplots to sustain the show, but too much of the main plot to cover to cut it down as much as B&W did. As I said, they should have taken a year's break after season four and plotted out in tedious detail exactly how the next X years were going to unfold. As it was, they tried to press on, realised too late they didn't have a plan, and then shat their bed and tried to compress everything into too small a timeframe.

I'm not saying George RR is culpable for the bad writing.  I'm saying that if the absence of George RR's writing is part of the problem - which plenty say it is, whether it is or not - the fact that he's tied himself in knots and can't work out how to finish it - and it certainly looks that way twenty eight years down the line with no end in sight, maybe it's a problem in the planning and George RR should have worked out what was going to happen and how before he started publishing the books.  He's stuck - and no wonder. 

But all of the stuff I've put in bold DID happen over the course of two episodes, and that's the bit that's important when you're trying to sell the heel turn of a character who's been farting rainbows for the best part of nine years. I don't much like Dany, and haven't since about season two, but even I didn't believe in that massacre.

No it didn't!  the people who advised her to ignore those tendencies are either dead, have advised her to do things that resulted in poor outcomes, or have usurped her in the popularity stakes.  She's gone from being everybody's heroine to being some foreigner who thinks she's it because everybodyl loves Jon Snow, who won't nob her anymore because she's his auntie and - even worse - has a better claim to the throne than her.  Barriston was killed ages ago.  Tyrion's sent them off to get a wight last season.  The Winterfell people ignored her from the first episode of this season - when she arrived, so it could hardly have happened previously. 

I've already suggested that, from what you've said, other people have been paying closer attention than you have.  You might not have noticed Danaerys' murderous tendencies, but that doesn't mean they've not been there. 

" When my dragons are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who wronged me! ... 
""I am not your little princess. I am Daenerys Stormborn of the blood of old Valyria and I will take what is mine, with fire and blood I will take it"

Those quotations are from seasons 2/3.  If you haven't worked out that she's prepared to barbecue people to get what she wants, I don't know what you've been watching.  It seems pretty fucking clear to me.

I don't understand why you're so desperate to get B&W off the hook or - failing that - roll out some GRRM whataboutism.

I'm not is the short answer.  I like talking about things that interest me and the show has and continues to interest me.  I find some people's criticisms of it to be odd - especially Danaerys' alleged 'heel turn' when it's palpably nothing of the sort.

If people don't like it, fair dos.  I'm interested in why I haven't gone off it as they have and when I ask them and their reasons are like the ones you've mentioned, it seems to me that they've - in the main - just not been paying attention.  And not just to tiny, subtle little clues either.  Explicit statements of intent appear to have been regularly ignored.

[NoSleep]

If something's inevitable it does mean it's predictable.  What it doesn't mean is that any/all of the characters will necessarily predict it because characters that are true to life are fallible, especially as regards things concerning themselves.  Rob and co couldn't have predicted the Red Wedding because if they had, they wouldn't have gone.  The readers/watchers were also unlikely to have predicted that either due to Guest Right, due to Frey being a coward who never stuck his neck out, due to lots of reasons.  It was surprising and practically nobody predicted it.  Does that prevent it being inevitable?  I would suggest that, to all intents and purposes, in a literary sense: yes it does.

Well, no, it doesn't prevent it from being inevitable. As I said in my answer to you that has now been overshadowed by Mister Six's epic reply.

Audiences were perhaps more shocked because they had been blindsided to Robb's lack of duty. It taught the audience something about the world that had been withheld up to that point. The only previous indications of how things should be were the existing marriages (Ned and Catelyn, Robert & Cersei) and how Sansa and Daenerys were being treated by their families to create alliances by their marriages. Catelyn said, quite a few times, that Frey was not to be fucked with. Once we knew that Roose Bolton and Tywin were behind it, too (more blindsiding) there was an inevitability to the outcome (just like a surprise attack might inevitably succeed).

After that it was better understood (by the audience) how things were run in Westeros, regarding high-born marriage.

[colacentral]

Darth Vader's turn at the end of Return of the Jedi is inevitable because the story can't end in any other way, seeing as that's what the story is about. That doesn't mean the story literally can't have another ending - he could take his helmet off and be Kermit the Frog underneath - but the story as set up and told is about his turn and there's no getting around that. That is what Ned's death in, in hindsight. If he went to the Wall, that wouldn't be an ending, it would be a new act in a completely different story.

I think you're taking a very narrow and literal interpretation of the word "inevitable," and even with the example quoted, "war was inevitable" you can quibble and say that war is never inevitable, as in a literal sense there's free will and war is never inevitable.

[MiddleRabbit]

Well, no, it doesn't prevent it from being inevitable. As I said in my answer to you that has now been overshadowed by Mister Six's epic reply.

We'll have to agree to differ then.

In psychology, there's such a thing as 'creeping determinism' which I might be accused of but with statements such as, "I will take what is mine, with fire and blood I will take it", preceding someone taking what they thought was theirs with fire and blood, I don't really think it applies in this situation.

"Audiences were perhaps more shocked because they had been blindsided to Robb's lack of duty. It taught the audience something about the world that had been withheld up to that point. The only previous indications of how things should be were the existing marriages (Ned and Catelyn, Robert & Cersei) and how Sansa and Daenerys were being treated by their families to create alliances by their marriages. Catelyn said, quite a few times, that Frey was not to be fucked with. Once we knew that Roose Bolton and Tywin were behind it, too (more blindsiding) there was an inevitability to the outcome (just like a surprise attack might inevitably succeed."

"Once we knew about Roose and Tywin" - That's creeping determinism because you only found that out once it had happened.

"(just like a surprise attack might inevitably succeed)."
Ah, there's the issue.  If something's inevitable, there's no 'might' about it, is there?

[MiddleRabbit]

Darth Vader's turn at the end of Return of the Jedi is inevitable because the story can't end in any other way, seeing as that's what the story is about. That doesn't mean the story literally can't have another ending - he could take his helmet off and be Kermit the Frog underneath - but the story as set up and told is about his turn and there's no getting around that. That is what Ned's death in, in hindsight. If he went to the Wall, that wouldn't be an ending, it would be a new act in a completely different story.

I think you're taking a very narrow and literal interpretation of the word "inevitable," and even with the example quoted, "war was inevitable" you can quibble and say that war is never inevitable, as in a literal sense there's free will and war is never inevitable.

I am taking a literal interpretation of the word 'inevitable' yes.  I'm doing that because it appears that the debate is currently centred around whether a thing is inevitable or not.  You might say that the example isn't accurate, but the Oxford English Dictionary wouldn't agree.

[Mister Six]

OED definition:
inevitable
ADJECTIVE

1. Certain to happen; unavoidable.
'war was inevitable'

If you're going to say that the authorial intent determines inevitability and that the characters have to choose the worst of two options then that doesn't make any sense to me.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that in some stories - GoT is one of them - the personalities of the characters and the situations they are in drive towards a certain conclusion, and that veering away from that conclusion would be narratively unsatisfying. Ned chooses the option that is noble because that is the man he is, but the circumstances surrounding him mean that the noble choice is also the worst one.

He could just dob in Cersei, but that would be out of character. He could fuck off being the Hand of the King, but that would be out of character. He could stop poking his nose into the mystery surrounding Joffrey's lineage, but that would be out of character too.

Likewise, Joffrey could go along with his mum's advice and send Ned off to the wall, but that would have been out of character - or at least not as much in character as deciding to have Ned killed at the last minute.

A good story of the kind Martin is building provides surprises, but upon looking back the audience can see that the road was really only heading in one direction, and that everything that occurred is a logical result of how all of the pieces - as established - would fall. That's narrative inevitability.

It doesn't matter that GRRM has changed his mind along the way, so long as what eventually goes down makes perfect sense in retrospect.

That's not the case with Dany. While we can divine some kind of fate from the scattered entrails Benioff and Weiss dug up from GRRM's bins, in the context of the story it doesn't work; it doesn't feel like a natural continuation of everything that had come before. It feels like it was time for Dany to go mental, and a few shots of her looking miffed at a party and frowning as her pals died was going to have to suffice.

If something's inevitable it does mean it's predictable.

No, it doesn't. Or at least not predictable in the lit-crit sense of being incredibly obvious. I'm sure that some people predicted Ned would die as soon as he went to King's Landing. I'm sure some people predicted Robb would come a cropper when he broke the pact with Frey (who has been established as a slimy and untrustworthy creep). I'm also sure that they were in the minority, because those deaths apparently surprised a great many people.

So yes, they were predictable in that someone could have predicted them. They were not predictable in any meaningful sense, however, because the book and show were written deliberately to subvert the expectations that people have for noble male warrior heroes in fantasy drama.

The secret alliance at the Red Wedding was the epitome of Deus Ex Machina and everybody loved it.

That's not what deus ex machina means. If anything it's the opposite of that.

If it only made sense after reading what other people wrote on message boards, how did the people on message boards work it out?  That's your problem, isn't it?  Once you accept that other people worked it out and you didn't, you're leaving yourself open to the suggestion that some people were paying closer attention than you were.  Just because a majority of people think a thing, it doesn't make them right, does it?

If the majority of the audience didn't get what was happening or why it was happening following years of extremely high audience satisfaction then yes, they are right and B&W fucked up. And going back and poring over past episodes to justify what happened in this one isn't a good replacement for the instantaneous shock of "My god - this is horrible but it makes sense!" that audiences felt when Ned and Robb died. You shouldn't have to perform a week-long online forensic investigation to justify the pivotal moment of an episode. It's shit writing, no matter how much it made sense to you as an individual.

You mentioned Romeo and Juliet earlier.  They suffer ignoble deaths.  Lady Macbeth dies offstage, ignobly.  Maybe you don't like it, but it doesn't necessarily make it bad writing when it happens.

No, because they are well-written stories and their motivations and the factors that conspire to create their deaths are well-established. Whereas latter-day GoT is a load of janky shit.

Why does a character arc have to be unrealistic?  Jaime, for instance.  Think of a smack addict.  A smacked realises that smack's bad for them and tries to give up and then slips back into old habits.  That wouldn't be bad writing, would it?  That would be realistic writing.  How is Jaime going back to that which is bad for him indicative of a poorly written character arc?

It's not what he does but the manner in which he does it. We're not given enough time with him or his mental state to make his internal anguish clear, so he goes from not showing any particular remorse for going to Winterfell, to shagging Brienne, to suddenly turning around to be with his sister (who just tried to have him assassinated). It doesn't make any sense within the moment because these are just bullet-pointed actions, not extensions of the character's personality. Because the show is no longer written well. Because it is shit.

I'm not saying George RR is culpable for the bad writing.  I'm saying that if the absence of George RR's writing is part of the problem - which plenty say it is, whether it is or not - the fact that he's tied himself in knots and can't work out how to finish it - and it certainly looks that way twenty eight years down the line with no end in sight, maybe it's a problem in the planning and George RR should have worked out what was going to happen and how before he started publishing the books.

None of that is relevant to this show though. Again, it's whataboutism.

No it didn't!  the people who advised her to ignore those tendencies are either dead, have advised her to do things that resulted in poor outcomes, or have usurped her in the popularity stakes.  She's gone from being everybody's heroine to being some foreigner who thinks she's it because everybodyl loves Jon Snow, who won't nob her anymore because she's his auntie and - even worse - has a better claim to the throne than her.  Barriston was killed ages ago.  Tyrion's sent them off to get a wight last season.  The Winterfell people ignored her from the first episode of this season - when she arrived, so it could hardly have happened previously. 

Nobody gives a fuck about Barriston. Dany basically acted the same as she always has up until the battle of Winterfell. Then in short order she lost Jorah, Missandei, Varys and her faith in Tyrion. And then she went mental. All of that in a couple of hours. If you're saying losing her calming advisors was a big part of her going fire-happy, it was rushed as hell.

" When my dragons are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who wronged me! ... 
""I am not your little princess. I am Daenerys Stormborn of the blood of old Valyria and I will take what is mine, with fire and blood I will take it"

Those quotations are from seasons 2/3.  If you haven't worked out that she's prepared to barbecue people to get what she wants, I don't know what you've been watching.  It seems pretty fucking clear to me.

But it doesn't work on a macro level, scene to scene. She's always torched people who wronged her or refused to back down. And there hasn't been enough indication that she's become any more ruthless up until this season. To go from that to a 40-minute scene of genocide is too much in too short a timeframe. It's shit writing. Which is why you're in the minority here and pretty much everywhere else on the internet.

[colacentral]

I am taking a literal interpretation of the word 'inevitable' yes.  I'm doing that because it appears that the debate is currently centred around whether a thing is inevitable or not.  You might say that the example isn't accurate, but the Oxford English Dictionary wouldn't agree.

Ned's death at the end of the season is inevitable because he's an honest character living in a dishonest world. Of course, it's not literally inevitable, because he could have slipped and fell off a cliff in episode one. But as a fictional story with a writer controlling the events, we apply the word "inevitable" in a different sense. In the real world there are few things that are inevitable in the simplistic way you're using it, including war. I don't know why you can't get your head round it.

[Piggyoioi]

Remember when one of Dany's dragons accidentally burnt the daughter of a goat farmer and she locked up her dragons in a dungeon?

[Noonling]

I guess this argument was inevitable.

[MiddleRabbit]

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that in some stories - GoT is one of them - the personalities of the characters and the situations they are in drive towards a certain conclusion, and that veering away from that conclusion would be narratively unsatisfying. Ned chooses the option that is noble because that is the man he is, but the circumstances surrounding him mean that the noble choice is also the worst one.

Unsatisfying is subjective, isn't it?  I don't find it unsatisfying. 

He could just dob in Cersei, but that would be out of character. He could fuck off being the Hand of the King, but that would be out of character. He could stop poking his nose into the mystery surrounding Joffrey's lineage, but that would be out of character too.

Likewise, Joffrey could go along with his mum's advice and send Ned off to the wall, but that would have been out of character - or at least not as much in character as deciding to have Ned killed at the last minute.

No argument from me on that score.

A good story of the kind Martin is building provides surprises, but upon looking back the audience can see that the road was really only heading in one direction, and that everything that occurred is a logical result of how all of the pieces - as established - would fall. That's narrative inevitability.

Like a woman who said "I will take what is mine with fire and blood." taking what was hers with fire and blood five seasons later?

It doesn't matter that GRRM has changed his mind along the way, so long as what eventually goes down makes perfect sense in retrospect.

That's not the case with Dany. While we can divine some kind of fate from the scattered entrails Benioff and Weiss dug up from GRRM's bins, in the context of the story it doesn't work; it doesn't feel like a natural continuation of everything that had come before. It feels like it was time for Dany to go mental, and a few shots of her looking miffed at a party and frowning as her pals died was going to have to suffice.

No, it doesn't. Or at least not predictable in the lit-crit sense of being incredibly obvious. I'm sure that some people predicted Ned would die as soon as he went to King's Landing. I'm sure some people predicted Robb would come a cropper when he broke the pact with Frey (who has been established as a slimy and untrustworthy creep). I'm also sure that they were in the minority, because those deaths apparently surprised a great many people.

I didn't predict the Red Wedding because it would have been too great a stretch for someone such as me to work out that a secret alliance between the Freys and the Lannisters had taken place without any indication that it had.  There might have been repercussions, but I don't see how anyone could have predicted that.  Danaerys going ballistic?  I don't know how anybody missed the signs for that.

So yes, they were predictable in that someone could have predicted them. They were not predictable in any meaningful sense, however, because the book and show were written deliberately to subvert the expectations that people have for noble male warrior heroes in fantasy drama.

Maybe.

That's not what deus ex machina means. If anything it's the opposite of that.

I can't agree with you there.  You might quibble with the terminology but the fact that there was no hint at the Lannister - Frey pact until after it happened meant that it was impossible for anyone to have worked it out.  Unlike Danaerys' personality.  It came from nowhere as far as anybody watching it was concerned.

If the majority of the audience didn't get what was happening or why it was happening following years of extremely high audience satisfaction then yes, they are right and B&W fucked up. And going back and poring over past episodes to justify what happened in this one isn't a good replacement for the instantaneous shock of "My god - this is horrible but it makes sense!" that audiences felt when Ned and Robb died. You shouldn't have to perform a week-long online forensic investigation to justify the pivotal moment of an episode. It's shit writing, no matter how much it made sense to you as an individual.

No it doesn't!  That's a logical fallacy: Argumentum ad popular i.e: it's not a logical argument.

No, because they are well-written stories and their motivations and the factors that conspire to create their deaths are well-established. Whereas latter-day GoT is a load of janky shit.

You're entitled to your opinion, same as everybody else is, but let's not get opinions confused with facts.  Or logic.

It's not what he does but the manner in which he does it. We're not given enough time with him or his mental state to make his internal anguish clear, so he goes from not showing any particular remorse for going to Winterfell, to shagging Brienne, to suddenly turning around to be with his sister (who just tried to have him assassinated). It doesn't make any sense within the moment because these are just bullet-pointed actions, not extensions of the character's personality. Because the show is no longer written well. Because it is shit.

Jaime's a complicated chap.  He wasn't always because he'd never met anybody like Brienne before.  The impression I got was that he went to Winterfell because he was moved by Brienne saying, "Fuck honour" at KL because he realised that, with the White Walker threat, family allegiances meant fuck all - which they did.  Once the White Walker threat was nullified, family matters again.  He was in love with Cersei, even though he knew it was bad.  He tried resisting it and he couldn't.  Maybe some people needed that spelling out for them, but I don't know why seeing as they've had Danaerys spelling it out what she was going to do and, apparently, they missed that.

None of that is relevant to this show though. Again, it's whataboutism.

Nobody gives a fuck about Barriston. Dany basically acted the same as she always has up until the battle of Winterfell. Then in short order she lost Jorah, Missandei, Varys and her faith in Tyrion. And then she went mental. All of that in a couple of hours. If you're saying losing her calming advisors was a big part of her going fire-happy, it was rushed as hell.

I see.  So when a character who had her respect and who advised her sensibly doesn't fit in with your previous statement that everybody she cared about died in the last two episodes, your response is that nobody gave a fuck about Barriston?  No.  You don't give a fuck about Barriston, she did because he was her link to Rhaegar, telling her about being nice and gentle.  Barrister's death doesn't suit your argument, so we discount him?  I can see why that suits you, but that's tough, isn't it?

But it doesn't work on a macro level, scene to scene. She's always torched people who wronged her or refused to back down. And there hasn't been enough indication that she's become any more ruthless up until this season. To go from that to a 40-minute scene of genocide is too much in too short a timeframe. It's shit writing. Which is why you're in the minority here and pretty much everywhere else on the internet.

Macro isn't scene to scene though, is it?  Macro is the whole thing.  There's been plenty of indication of it as far as I'm concerned and, again, Argument Ad Populum is a logical fallacy.  If your argument was sound, you wouldn't need to revert to saying, "Everybody says it, so it must be true."  No, you're wrong about that.  You're entitled to think whatever you want and that's groovy but you're trying to make the subjective objective and it's not.

I don't know what proportion of people hate it and love it and I'm not interested either.  If I was interested in that, I'd join a Michael McKintyre forum.  The question is,  bearing in mind this fixation with the majority you're exhibiting, why aren you on a Chris Morris forum when Michael McKintyre's more popular and therefore better?

[MiddleRabbit]

Ned's death at the end of the season is inevitable because he's an honest character living in a dishonest world. Of course, it's not literally inevitable, because he could have slipped and fell off a cliff in episode one. But as a fictional story with a writer controlling the events, we apply the word "inevitable" in a different sense. In the real world there are few things that are inevitable in the simplistic way you're using it, including war. I don't know why you can't get your head round it.

I don't agree with you.  Lots of things are inevitable in exactly the way I suggested: night following day, gravity doing what gravity does, leaving things in hot ovens leads to burning them and plenty more. 

Why can't I get my head around it?  It's a good question.  A better question would be why the OED picked that as an example when, apparently, it's not a very good one.