HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

expecting television to give you more than basic titillation is like asking for a rollercoaster to make you think

this post was not by who I thought it was by

I believe it was Scientific American who said it was a great modern TV tragedy that they reduced the season length from 10 to 7 (or 6) and I agree!

The weird (I guess) issue I had with a lot of Season 8 consistency was all the Lion-oriented interior decoration. You wouldn't think that the staunchly "I didn't fuck my brother" queen might retain the sigil of her departed king and "father" of two deceased monarchs? I.. guess not?

Why would she? The lion is her sigil.

By now she knows everyone knows she's knobbing her brother so no need to keep up that pretence any more.

http://i.imgur.com/z7iHD54.png

It's possible to think this was crap even after lowering all expectations - the assumption that you yourself treat TV with the lack of respect it deserves but anyone criticising this show in fact expects it to be high art is practically sociopathic in its insularity.

I think the idea of a West of Westeros the gutther advrntures of Arya Stark or whatever they'd call it has the potential to be quite interesting if done right. Though hate to see potential squandered.

& just hope she hasn't gone and sailed off the side of a flat earth. I take it the planet Westeros is on is supposed to be a globe though.

It's a banana

Eye of Macumba theory still holds

The whole episode felt like a rushed first draft of a script that no one bothered to ask any difficult questions about. Say what you like about the rest of the season at least it worked as blockbuster entertainment but this was just a clunker. The meeting of the new small council was probably the best thing about it because it was probably the only time I felt like I was watching characters I recognised and not pieces being shuffled up and down a board.

Kind of think that the writers might have nailed the landing if they'd a) had writers who could write dialogue and b) worked the last season's worth of story into two - allowing the last two episodes' worth of plot to play out over a whole season. That way they could have shown Cersei's downfall and Dany's descent into tyranny properly and worked some actual conflict and peril into Tyrion's imprisonment and Jon's situation. And used Varys properly. As it was it was just rushed and the less said about the murder scene and its aftermath the better.

Also Bran Stark if you can warg into a dragon then maybe do so before it's used a weapon of genocide? Then again who am I to question the good and rightful King of Westeros.

tbf it's never confirmed Bran intends to or is really capable of warging Drogon and it was a relief that when he said perjsps he could find him it didn't cut to a bunch of warged crows flying east out of Kings Landing

The alternative is the dragon decided to melt down the Iron Throne out of a mixture of grief and stop-the-madness while deciding to just let Jon go, which is somehow worse.

I just assumed the dragon let him go because he was a Targaryen

But yeah, it seems like the first part is true - and very stupid

The throne was stupid and that is reaon enough for it to be melted by anyone with the power to do so.

Also, half the dialogue was characters over-explaining the writers' own rushed character decisions, like Jon and Tyrion banging on about how the signs were there about Dany all along.

Nice to see Edmure again though, love that dude.

there is a funny tension in a show that got big off sudden intense twists and popcorn moments ending with a seer in charge, perfectly calm and able to look back in time to check he's posting as he always has

it was so bad that it would have been better if the last scene was ned stark having a shower in 1994 and realising it was all a dream.

Late doors Bran was such a weird character, a deus ex machina with no real plot function. Everything he did could have been done by someone else quite easily (Sam, Arya, whoever).

They should really have done a reprise of the final episode of the first season, with Jon in the Ned position, but Arya no longer standing idly by. Then she could have gone west to escape the wrath of the unsullied. And the big question for everyone else should be who gets to tell *this* story and how do you tell it. Arghh.

what I tried to type earlier was

I think the idea of a West of Westeros the further adventures of Arya Stark or whatever they'd call it has the potential to be quite interesting if done right. Though hate to see potential squandered.

but typing on phone not great.

I assume that there are no immediate plans to further follow any of the surviving characters though. & certainly see that as a more interesting possibility than following Jon Snow into the reclaimed North of the Wall though that might have possibilities too.
Further adventures of Tyrion in righting some longstanding wrongs might have some possibilities. Or Sansa Queen of the Free North.

But I like the idea of the explorations of a single female in the Uncharted territories of the world they live in. Though could see the drawbacks in terms of a woman's perceived place in the medieval world. Could be good though.

As for spinoff ideas, someone pointed out that the final scene with Drogon was him flying eastwards with Dany's body. So maybe he's returning to Essos to the area where he's originally from? But said area also has magicians (like Melisandre) who can bring the dead back to life... So if they really wanted to, they could do a sequel series where a pissed off, resurrected Daenerys declares war on Westeros. I doubt they're gonna do that, but since they didn't show what happened to her body, maybe they were intentionally keeping the door open, in case someone wants to do such a sequel?

an idea just awful enough to work!

there is a funny tension in a show that got big off sudden intense twists and popcorn moments ending with a seer in charge, perfectly calm and able to look back in time to check he's posting as he always has

There's a bit of a horrific implication with Bran saying "why do you think I came all the way here?" after Tyrion makes the plea for him to become the king. It could suggest that Bran foresaw everything that was gonna happen, including Dany destroying King's Landing and Jon murdering her, so neither of them could become the new ruler, thus opening the door for him. But if he saw all of that, then that means he decided not to warn anyone about the massacre and let it play out, just so the others would see Dany needs to be killed. Which doesn't seem like a good omen for what kind of a king he will be.

In fact, there is (of course there is) a whole "Bran is evil" fan theory, according to which Bran deliberately told Jon about his true parentage, knowing that the truth would get out, that it would destabilise Daenerys, leading to her lash-out and subsequent death, and that Bran's endgame was always to become the king.

Bran can't see the future but they could've done a couple of shots of him en route to KL with his eyes whited out the whole time as he watched the immediate past in almost real time (can he see things just moments after they happened? ugh).

the two-faced raven

& just hope she hasn't gone and sailed off the side of a flat earth.

This would totally be a great show, have her off exploring exotic lands of what she believes is a flat earth. And maybe it is a flat earth! Make it kind of a lighthearted quippy adventure, where she meets new peoples and creatures. And then, on the cusp of cancellation after its first season and shortened second season, she finds a portal, and that portal takes her to ... modern round earth times! She opens a detective agency and solves crimes and mysteries. But it turns out she's not alone, and other people and creatures magical and medieval have made it through the portal in the past as well and formed a council of evil, which will become her arch nemesis.

Also, Bran would somehow give her the power to communicate with pets. But we'll never find out what ultimately happens, because this second spin-off will be cancelled after the first season. And then they can reboot Game of Thrones.

modern round earth times!

i do enjoy the implication here that the round earth is a recent development

Allegedly.

like don cupitt's insistence that galaxies were only ~70 years old

Bran can't see the future but they could've done a couple of shots of him en route to KL with his eyes whited out the whole time as he watched the immediate past in almost real time

As for spinoff ideas, someone pointed out that the final scene with Drogon was him flying eastwards with Dany's body. So maybe he's returning to Essos to the area where he's originally from? But said area also has magicians (like Melisandre) who can bring the dead back to life... So if they really wanted to, they could do a sequel series where a pissed off, resurrected Daenerys declares war on Westeros. I doubt they're gonna do that, but since they didn't show what happened to her body, maybe they were intentionally keeping the door open, in case someone wants to do such a sequel?

Sequel would be 3 seasons of Drogon flying back to Essos, 1 season resurrecting Dany, 2 seasons of Dany dicking around Mereen (because what else did she ever do), and finally 1 six-episode season introducing and concluding the invasion of Westeros.

Poor Edmure. That "no having kids in case they Hilary Benn me" tweet in human form

I thought Dany's "became a terrible person after she went on the management training scheme" energy with Jon was quite convincing while it lasted

Something they didn’t beat us over the head with:
Jon inadvertently gave Tyrion the idea of Bran as king by saying “love is the death of duty”

Yeah, that "why do you think I came all this way" line has no good readings for Bran

Very fun Bran theory from my sister @AlexofComics #GamesOfThrones pic.twitter.com/hOcv4vxpj7

— Siobhan Thompson (@vornietom) May 20, 2019

rip fan theories

GoT is different than Lost in that there were many fan theories that would have been much better than what actually happened, whereas the GoT fan theories are almost uniformly lame

what actually happened at the end of Lost I mean

It's obvious that making Bran king is a terrible idea because Tyrion came up with it.

I also remembered how drunk he was the night he heard Bran's supposedly incredible story.

sawyer was the horse

I don't remember a single good fan-theory about Lost? But the not knowing was definitely better than the knowing :(

Extremely glad the shittiest fan theory of them all (Tyrion/anyone besides Jon being secret Targaryens) died an unmourned death. Thanks, terrible s8!

Lost needed fan theories, because the vast majority of the show made little to no sense. GoT generated fan theories because fans thought their ideas were better.

To be fair to the fans, they were.

Like, was it here or elsewhere, or both, that someone suggested what a clever fake out it would have been had the white walkers skipped Winterfell entirely and gone straight to King's Landing, only for the good guys to discover a zombified city? That would have been pretty cool, and would have set up a better final battle that finally paid off literally years of building up the ice zombies as the greatest threat in the history of mankind.

We talked about it. I was a big believer that it would be the case, it was called "The Night King Is Not Stupid" theory

Yeah. But it was way too optimistic. When the writers are stupid, all the characters are stupid.

screen time spend building up Dany's quest for Iron Throne vs. time spent building up zombie invasion pretty lopsided though