- cross-posted to:
- memes@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- memes@sopuli.xyz
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I still think it would have been a better ending if the white walkers killed everyone and took over. Just stepping over bodies of favorite characters as they get seated on the iron throne.
Like the red wedding or the end of season 1…
That would have been a shit ending. But you are right, it would have been much better than we got.
I don’t know how actors contracts etc. work, so I am genuinely curious. Is refusing not an option for them? Surely most of these actors already have enough money…
It would also have penalties for breaking the contract which could be very high, plus if you tank a major production without good reason your career is probably over
Although here’s hoping Nick Frost does the right thing.
Are you referring to him playing Hagrid?
Correct.
I for one loved the ending. I never liked Danny.
It’s not the ending per se, it’s how rushed it all was. Dany going villain was always projected, especially in the last published book. But it’s the rushing of the storyline and the distinct decline in quality dialogue that made it so bad. The storyline could and should have been fleshed out more with maybe even 2 extra seasons. Instead the seasons were shortened and they tried (and failed miserably) to wrap it up quickly.
As for the dialogue, compare the dialogues of Tyrion and Varys from the first 3 seasons to the last 3 seasons and you will wonder if those are the same characters. They were quick witted and sharp in the first seasons, but in the last 3 it’s all “Hur hur, you don’t have a cock” jokes. And that’s just one of the more obvious flaws. So many story threads had no conclusion, the actions stopped making sense, what should be a multi month voyage is reduced to days, etc, etc, etc…
It will be taught in movie colleges as a warning for decades, if not centuries.
100% agree. The whole “good guy becoming a conqueror villain” motif isn’t new. The problem is they rushed it so hard. You had characters constantly telling us “she’s not well and must be stopped” and I was like “based on what???”
If they had an extra season to show her slowly descending to the point the bells would set her off it would have been a beautiful tragedy. Instead it felt more like a “I go crazy you all die now!” heel turn.
I came here to say this comment. I am often telling people that the Dany’s ending was by far the most likely outcome of her path. But she went from hero to villain in 2 hours of screen time. It’s awful showrunning and producing.
Script was garbage but that did not happen.
It’s deceptively worded, because it kinda happened (at least according to Clarke).
From https://ew.com/tv/2019/05/19/game-thrones-finale-interview-emilia-clarke/
“What, what, what, WHAT!?” the actress recalls thinking. “Because it comes out of f—king nowhere. I’m flabbergasted. Absolutely never saw that coming.”
“I cried,” Clarke says. “And I went for a walk. I walked out of the house and took my keys and phone and walked back with blisters on my feet. I didn’t come back for five hours. I’m like, ‘How am I going to do this?’”
She never says she dislikes the script and makes it clear that she found the story surprising and emotional. Which is true, the story is surprising (not in a good way, but it is surprising) and for her character it is full of emotion.
I skipped it. I’ve even rewatched the other season, I simply refuse to watch the last.
Don’t wanna form your own opinion?
IIRC correctly, they were so checked out, working on potential future projects (that were also fucking terrible), that they had most of the work passed off to others?
Honestly though, I blame the author. GOT was great until they ran out of source material. Then you saw how terrible D&D really are at this. MF still hasn’t finished the series. If you can’t finish it, then don’t fucking start it.
Maybe Sanderson can pick up the mantle for this one too.
Not to disagree on the topic but “if you can’t finnish it, don’t start it” is absolutely horrible advice when its about a creative art like writing.
If i am not wrong there is a whole writing style about just starting without knowing yourself where its going to end.
I highly dislike capitalism but i can see that once you have enough material to sell some of it, even if incomplete as a series. Many people would take the opportunity. I don’t know the authors economic background but for a starving artist with high potential that first book sales could be the push required to finish a series.
I blame capitalism, both for putting artists in this position and for the disrespect of big media towards their own content quality. Its always the money must flow, at every cost!
Even without capitalism I prefer having been able to read the existing books without an ending over not being able to read any of them. I can get some enjoyment from the journey even without a destination
That’s a wild take on writing lmao. If you’re not sure the author will finish it, don’t start reading it.
If you have a problem with unfinished works, don’t ingest them until they’re finished. The artist doesn’t owe you anything.
I didn’t say anything remotely close to saying artists owed me anything. Dude bit off more than he can chew.
I have a right to be frustrated when I’m invested in a story and it just stops.
Similarly he had a right to not finish the book- what you don’t have is a right to tell other people what to do.
If you can’t finish it, then don’t fucking start it.
This is neither a simple expression of frustration nor is it a criticism.
It is a command.
Hence why you’re being called entitled.
I was a diehard fan of the show and the books. Mostly the books. The show, I stopped loving after the midway point of season 4 when it dawned on me that these fucks had no idea what they were doing and worse yet: they didn’t actually care.
That the only reason the show had been this good up until now was because they had more or less translated the book into script directly and George had also been with them in the writers room right up until their “creative differences” in season 4.
I originally stopped watching after suffering through season 5 and only went back because my friends begged me to watch it with them and I was the ASOIAF expert in the group. When Arya killed the Night King I quietly turned it off and never finished it.
I think it hit me so hard because had I spent almost a decade being a super dedicated fan who would spend a lot of my free time deep diving into analyses and studying the worldbuilding, listening to interviews and talks with George, listening to fan podcasts that did deep dives, reading and re-reading the books while taking my own notes and making my own theories. It had really helped me through a very very dark period in my life where I felt lost and like I didn’t have a purpose at all. It might sound a bit dumb, but yeah. It was one of many little things in my life that helped me hold on to it and not just peace out, you know.
And to realize that Dumb and Dumber didn’t actually care and that they rushed the shit out of the show and pooped out season 8 because they wanted to move on to star wars (lol how did that go for them?) that was just so painful. Not just for myself, but for George too. The cast and crew who dedicated so much blood sweat and tears to this franchise and for the fans like me who loved this world so much and got inspired to write and build worlds ourselves while escaping from things in our real lives that hurt.
And it just got farted out like that when there was no reason for it.
I am not kidding when I say that up until recently when Trump announced for a second time that he wants to annex Greenland from my country, the way Dumb and Dumber treated GoT was the angriest I had ever been. Goofy as it sounds. .
It literally killed my interest in reading books and watching movies and TV shows. It took me three years to start watching movies again regularly and I am generally known among friends and colleagues as the movie buff. I’m the one you ask for movie recommendations. GoT killed my interest in movies for three years. It’s better nowadays, but I still don’t watch TV shows and I rarely read. If I do I try to stay away from series. Only exception was Earthsea recently. But yeah.
The last time I dove into the ASOIAF world was when George released Fire and Blood. I haven’t touched it since and I will probably never rewatch the show nor re-read the books. It’s just such a bitter feeling everytime I see anything from that franchise now.
I feel your pain. Truly.
George and Pat Rothfuss changed my reading habits, now I’m not picking up series unless they’re done. Plenty of great works out there, like The Last Kingdom or the Aubrey/Maturin series. Ditto for TV series, especially Netflix produced ones. Too many get the chop on a dip of viewership these days.
I half suspect George lost his will to write after seeing how dnd massacred the last 3 seasons. Who wouldn’t? Especially if they were mangling his book notes. Now he’s treating this series as a chore, and he’d rather do anything else.
Personally, I fully believe that the way the show ended played a huge role in George not finishing the books.
George is a perfectionist and I remember how he once mentioned that he stopped following fan forums years before the show was even a thing because when he saw fan theories guessing correctly the plot twists he had been working on, he started second guessing himself and felt the urge to change them. Instead of doing that, he stuck with the plots he had thought out and cut himself off from the fan forums, as I said.
I also know that George entrusted Dumb and Dumber with the biggest plot twists and they carelessly butchered almost all of them in the show.
While things were still good, George would regularly upload sample chapters for Winds of Winter onto his blog and I read all of them. I used to think that the idiot showrunners would take the show in a different direction and leave it up to George to finish his vision on his own because it was clear he wouldn’t finish the books before the show caught up to them.
Many fans agreed and expected that the showrunners would go in their own direction because they had made several choices along the way that entirely closed off important plotpoints and back then we all thought that they were capable writers.
Turns out the changes were more stuff like "we can’t include Tysha because Tyrion is popular and we don’t want him to go on his villain arc because hes a fan favourite. Stuff like that.
And for me, it became very clear that they were following George’s plot when the sample chapters from Winds of Winter appeared in the show in the most mangled manner.
I believe that the way the show ended was a horror fun house mirror of the true ending that George had planned for decades. They fucked it because they are retarded and lazy. I cannot imagine anything more heartbreaking as a writer with the perfectionism and self doubt that George has to see my big ending with Dany going mad, Jaime and Cersei dying in each other’s arms and Bran becoming the king of the north being done so terribly and being recieved with so much hatred from the fans.
Although I fully believe that Arya killing the night king was Dumb and Dumber following the girl boss trend and not what George had planned for her nor Jon’s characters.
I genuinely think it broke him. The fact that he already struggles with finishing his works because of his perfectionism was bad enough, but to realize that you handed over the pay offs of your decades long magnum opus to two retards… ooff.
I’m still trying to get back into reading. Recently I have mostly stuck with autobiographies of local people in my country. Reading about dirt poor farmers in the 30s and 40a and stuff like that is pretty sick. Makes you both appreciate the comforts you have in the 21st century and mourn the lost connection with nature and the seasons. Anyways, biographies are kinda my catnip these days. For some reasons, and despite loving fiction, I still just can’t find it in me to bother to get invested in someone else’s worldbuilding xD again, Earthsea being the only exception.
Also sorry for my bad English. I’m usually better at writing, but I’m in stupid mode today. 🫠
What bad English? 😅
I saw this in the news today and remembered our conversation: https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/george-rr-martin-confirms-the-winds-of-winter-isnt-his-current-priority/ar-AA1U9JZB
And frankly, I can’t blame him. After all, we’re wired to seek joy and fulfillment in our lives, and I guess it’s pretty clear where those lie for good ol George these days. My secret hope though is that he’s just giving us time to forget the horror show before he releases the true ending of the story.
Also, if I were him, I’d just kill Tyrion out of spite, and then in the stupidest way possible. Let him get randomly kicked by a camel and choke in his own blood (or equivalent) and let a 3rd rank, barely named character take the spotlight in his stead. Maybe Polk will discover he has a head for politics after all? Go wild!
Without having any of the background you have, I also couldn’t finish season five, it just felt off. The spark was gone, and I wasn’t hooked anymore.
So as someone who has never read, nor any intention to read the books, it isn’t worthwhile?
The books aren’t finished, with no indication of when it will be, when the next book will be or even if it will be finished before Martin dies so take note of that before you start.
In saying that, the books are way better than the HBO series. And are worth the read IMO.
This, as someone who had read the books before the HBO series was a thing
As someone that just read the books:
Arya killing the night king isn’t just thematically and plot appropriate with like five different chekovs guns shooting his face at once, it’s just cool to have all this magic bullshit fixed with a blade in the dark imo.
The problem is that scene was ugly and poorly filmed with shit tier effects. Plus she basically just yolos at the guy… Have her use her goddamn assassin powers, how hard is that?
I just don’t believe that is what she’s destined for at all. I think her plot has way more to do with stealth assassinations of people who are untouchable in Westoros. The whole winter is coming part is Jon’s plot.
I do believe that Arya’s story is all about how dedicating your life to revenge makes you a lonely, empty person and Jon says something to her in the first book way before everything happens that j believe was foreshadowing. Can’t remember the exact quote, but they talk about how much she hates sowing and Jon jokes that she will be found frozen dead in spring with a needle in her hand.
It is also important to remember that the night king in the show is not the same as the Night’s King in the books and that he’s not just some dumb villain who needs to be killed. There is so much more to him and he is also a Stark.
I am curious, though, on your perspective and why you believe Arya will kill the Night’s King in the books.
You don’t train someone as an assassin and specifically give them a sword made of the metal that kills Night Kings if you don’t plan on them killing a Night King, first off. It’s also the exact kind of reversal of expectations for conflict resolving that Martin loves and, on the topic, I think the reason we’re never getting his ending is because it’s clear that this was his ending and people hated it.
As for her character arc and revenge, that’s the thing, it’s not revenge, it’s her duty as a Stark. By your own reasoning using her new skills in this way instead of going after the Lannisters or whoever is the inevitable conclusion.
Also, being what he is, I fully expect the leader of the Others in the book to get called a Night King/Night’s King if by some miracle he does actually publish the rest of the series. Yeah there’s all that stuff about that being a historical figure but it’s also the kind of name that becomes a title in its own right.
But, all that said, at this point only Martin really knows what his intentions are and were.
Forgive me, because it has been awhile, but I have zero recollection of Arya owning a blade made from dragon glass. What sword are you referring to?
I still hold on to the belief that Arya’s fate is to assassinate differnet people in high places around Westoros, but not necessarily her main targets.
Of course the leader is the Night’s King. K just don’t believe he will behave the way he did in the show. The White walkers looked nothing like what they do in the show. They are more like undead ice elves in the books, who speak and show impressive intelligence. The Night’s King will be there, he’s just not the same as in the show.
And I do not believe Arya will be the one to kill him.
Valyrian steel can kill white walkers, and that Needle is made of it gets brought up repeatedly when Martin is reminding the readers of where all the known Valyrian steel swords are.
I do not understand why fools rush these things and ruin good things. You’re holding a gold mine and put it through a paper shredder for what?
At the time rumor was that the Benioff and Weiss were already working on their next show (3-body problem?), and just wanted to get GoT out of the way.
IIRC they were tied to something Star Wars related, which they subsequently lost. It was the tiniest consolation for GoT fans as it did nothing to un-ruin the show.
We live in the age of everything behind a subscription, the people without talent will always try to take a good thing and burn it for a buck. Trying to understand them is like trying to understand why people voted for a man in a diaper, trice.
They were bored and thought they would just take a piss all over it to get to their lucrative star wars deal.
…HBO was? Weren’t they, like, the bosses?
HBO gave Dumb and Dumber an unlimited budget and unlimited seasons because the show was the biggest success they had ever had and Dumb and Dumber were like: nah, let’s finish this shit and move on to star wars.
As a result of this action, star wars dropped Dumb and Dumber from their deal and their careers were destroyed. I have seen their names pop up in writing credits on a few projects since GoT ended, but it’s never something that is mentioned or used to promote the movie or show they are working on. Hollywood knows to keep these losers’ names out of the spotlight.
I cannot imagine the entitlement of these two, to have pretty much won the Hollywood game to the point that they had unlimited budget, unlimited seasons and episodes to continue making the most popular tv show in the world and they thought they were too good for it.
And everytime I heard people blame George for them running out of material I remind them that these two fucks skipped and ENTIRE BOOK in the ASOIAF series because they thought it was boring.
