GoT finale
May. 20th, 2019 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyVery quick and disordered thoughts for now, will probably have more to say in a few days.
JON: It doesn't feel right.
The eerie silence as Tyrion walks through the city. Tyrion digging out his dead family. That's good stuff. If I ever rewatch the series, I think I might hit "STOP" right there and call it a wrap.
Dany is given the full Nürnberg rally treatment. Including speaking in a foreign language with subtitles so we don't miss that this is a Mad FOREIGN Queen. Her death feels so empty because it doesn't feel like Dany. When we're supposed to believe she's gone MAD, we don't get her POV. When she's allowed to talk, we only get platitudes. When other characters try to justify her actions, they sound like fans desperately trying to patch plot holes. After eight seasons of buildup, Dany gets sidelined even quicker than she was villainified and is barely even mentioned again. Fuck this shit. (Drogon's scene is nice, though. Nice of him to realise that the throne was the villain all along.)
Wait, fucking TULLY gets to brag about his skill in statesmanship? ...OK, no. Haha.
Wait, they're seriously going to hold a referendum on... OK, no. Haha.
"Who has a better story than Bran?" You mean the guy the SHOW ITSELF ignored for a whole season? The guy who has no opinions or desires on anything whatsoever? Um... Who has a better story... EVERYONE?! Fuck, the New Prince Of Dorne has a better claim. Did they just pull his name out of a hat to get the fucking I Am Logical And Smart Reddit people to like this ending?
And Arya suddenly wants to be Columbus for no reason? Well, I wouldn't want to stick around in Westeros either.
BRAN: You were exactly where you were supposed to be.
Fucking BSG God Wills It ending.
"A Song of Ice and Fire." ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS FUCKING HOBBIT BULLSHIT
So basically, Westeros will now be ruled by the small council while the king spends his days watching dragons. There's a metaphor for the show in here. Well, at least we can be sure that all future king elections will be held by fair and wise lords who hold the people's best interests at heart, right? I mean, Robin Arryn looked pretty healthy here, he should be around for another 50 years or so to guarantee the sanity of the election.
And everyone rides off in a very cinematic but completely meaningless way. Well, at least Ghost finally got his ear scritched. ETA: Pretty much this:
JON: It doesn't feel right.
JON: It doesn't feel right.
The eerie silence as Tyrion walks through the city. Tyrion digging out his dead family. That's good stuff. If I ever rewatch the series, I think I might hit "STOP" right there and call it a wrap.
Dany is given the full Nürnberg rally treatment. Including speaking in a foreign language with subtitles so we don't miss that this is a Mad FOREIGN Queen. Her death feels so empty because it doesn't feel like Dany. When we're supposed to believe she's gone MAD, we don't get her POV. When she's allowed to talk, we only get platitudes. When other characters try to justify her actions, they sound like fans desperately trying to patch plot holes. After eight seasons of buildup, Dany gets sidelined even quicker than she was villainified and is barely even mentioned again. Fuck this shit. (Drogon's scene is nice, though. Nice of him to realise that the throne was the villain all along.)
Wait, fucking TULLY gets to brag about his skill in statesmanship? ...OK, no. Haha.
Wait, they're seriously going to hold a referendum on... OK, no. Haha.
"Who has a better story than Bran?" You mean the guy the SHOW ITSELF ignored for a whole season? The guy who has no opinions or desires on anything whatsoever? Um... Who has a better story... EVERYONE?! Fuck, the New Prince Of Dorne has a better claim. Did they just pull his name out of a hat to get the fucking I Am Logical And Smart Reddit people to like this ending?
And Arya suddenly wants to be Columbus for no reason? Well, I wouldn't want to stick around in Westeros either.
BRAN: You were exactly where you were supposed to be.
Fucking BSG God Wills It ending.
"A Song of Ice and Fire." ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS FUCKING HOBBIT BULLSHIT
So basically, Westeros will now be ruled by the small council while the king spends his days watching dragons. There's a metaphor for the show in here. Well, at least we can be sure that all future king elections will be held by fair and wise lords who hold the people's best interests at heart, right? I mean, Robin Arryn looked pretty healthy here, he should be around for another 50 years or so to guarantee the sanity of the election.
And everyone rides off in a very cinematic but completely meaningless way. Well, at least Ghost finally got his ear scritched. ETA: Pretty much this:
In the end, what did any of it mean? Arya with the face-swapping assassin skills, or Jon coming back from the dead, or Tyrion’s scheming, or Daenerys’s time in Meereen? Look beyond even that. What about the Children of the Forest, or the battle with the Night King? What about the ice dragon? What was the point of any of it? Did any of those things add anything to the story beyond, “Well... that happened”?
JON: It doesn't feel right.
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Date: 2019-05-20 11:30 am (UTC)However, this was the first review I read, and it was somehow perfectly pitched to my level of investment. (Also anything that incorporates both Buffy & Monty Python is automatically great in my book!)
And from what I gather, in choosing Bran, it's sort of choosing the story of the land as the king? Which is lovely on a metaphorical level.
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Date: 2019-05-20 08:34 pm (UTC)I kind of like Chuck Wendig's post: Endings are not stoppings. I don't agree with all of it, and I do have some other thoughts, but overall, it felt like they just... got bored, wrapped it up and walked away. So much that D&D themselves, not GRRM, set up and never paid off. So many characters that just got an express pass to The End. I mean, if we're going to drop pop culture references, Bran's election reminds me of that Simpsons episode where all the kids are trapped on a deserted island and the ending narration says "...and eventually they were all rescued by... oh, let's say Moe."
And from what I gather, in choosing Bran, it's sort of choosing the story of the land as the king? Which is lovely on a metaphorical level.
It is, and if they'd actually bothered setting that up rather than just telling us that, I might have loved it. But as with so many character developments over the last two mini-seasons, it feels like we just have to take their word for it. Honestly, if we're supposed to believe the sort of powers Bran claims to have, the whole thing feels like Bran is a supervillain who let everyone else take each other out and just surfed right through to the throne.
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Date: 2019-05-21 07:58 pm (UTC)LOL. Oh that's beautiful. And thanks for the link.
Honestly, if we're supposed to believe the sort of powers Bran claims to have, the whole thing feels like Bran is a supervillain who let everyone else take each other out and just surfed right through to the throne.
Ah yes, I've seen people liking him to Palpatine, Google and AI.
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Date: 2019-05-23 06:08 am (UTC)So the ending here is basically the ending of "Kerblam!".
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Date: 2019-05-23 06:13 am (UTC)However, only being a bystander, with knowledge from the books, this is really all I care about:
And then I don't know if you have seen this article? It makes me terribly happy. Like, nevermind all the rest, but Sansa = Elizabeth I is what I am here for!
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Date: 2019-05-23 09:35 pm (UTC)Also, did you see this?
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Date: 2019-05-26 03:57 pm (UTC)I am VERY pleased. :)
Also, did you see this?
... I did not! But my flist brought me this. VERY much NSFW.
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Date: 2019-05-26 05:40 pm (UTC)"There are qualified women sitting up there yet they elect a baby goth psychic?"
Yeah, pretty much.
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Date: 2019-05-27 08:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-20 02:57 pm (UTC)Dany is just a cardbord cutout now. She has no connection to the character that was developed over 7 seasons.
Both the counsel and the kings counsel are a joke. If I was Arya, I'd leave too, though why she wants to is also beyond me.
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Date: 2019-05-20 08:42 pm (UTC)Pretty much. After last episode, I sort of took for granted that she had to die, but it never occurred to me that they'd go "...eh, Daenerys who?" Killing her should be a difficult choice, it should have consequences beyond Grey Worm looking a bit miffed. That said, I do like that they didn't even bother showing Jon Snow trying to lie about it; of course he'd Tell The Truth because that's what Honourable Men do.
If I was Arya, I'd leave too, though why she wants to is also beyond me.
Maybe she just tells everyone that so they won't bother her, then sets up base on an island off the coast so Gendry can occasionally row across. He's good at rowing.
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Date: 2019-05-20 08:56 pm (UTC)I've no idea, why they thought that would work.
Also Bran...it's like the throne of Westeros is now some sort of inverse Top Model contest. "Noooo, I don't think so, you just need to not want it more!"
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Date: 2019-05-20 09:28 pm (UTC)Noooo, I don't think so, you just need to not want it more!
I get the "power belongs to the person who doesn't seek it" cliché. There's a point to it, even if it's often (including here) used as shorthand to vilify anyone (especially any woman) with ambition to do anything about their situation. But jesus christ, ever since he met up with Max von Sydow, Bran has cared about NOTHING. This is the guy whose only words to the woman who loved him and sacrificed EVERYTHING for him were "Thank you." Who's displayed nothing useful whatsoever beyond a capability to confirm other people's theories about what's going on. Who was a complete failure as Lord of Winterfell. Whose only contribution to the battle of Winterfell was to sit in a garden and do nothing. I honestly can't think of any main character less qualified for the throne. At least Hot Pie can cook.
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Date: 2019-05-20 09:46 pm (UTC)And also yes, to Bran just beeing dull. They should have left him some personality, some ability to care. I mean, Bran is also dull in the books, but not that dull. My hopes were for him to die in the battle of Winterfell.
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Date: 2019-05-21 02:44 pm (UTC)That's another thing they set up and never paid off. Bran tells Jaime there might not be an "after" for both of them after the battle, he goes on this mystical warg... and then they both survive and he makes absolutely no difference to the battle whatsoever.
But maybe Bran isn't as all-knowing as he likes to tell people.
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Date: 2019-05-20 07:18 pm (UTC)Her death feels so empty because it doesn't feel like Dany. When we're supposed to believe she's gone MAD, we don't get her POV. When she's allowed to talk, we only get platitudes. When other characters try to justify her actions, they sound like fans desperately trying to patch plot holes. After eight seasons of buildup, Dany gets sidelined even quicker than she was villainified and is barely even mentioned again.
Yeah, didn't like that either. Not one bit.
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Date: 2019-05-20 08:50 pm (UTC)Yep. It was serviceable. Occasionally better than reading a recap of it. In a way I almost wish it would have been more awful as long as it had tried. Instead they just... wrapped. (Again, Chuck Wendig's post echoes a lot of my thoughts.)
They pretty much spent the last two episodes going "lol Dany never mattered lol", didn't they?
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Date: 2019-05-20 09:14 pm (UTC)Yes, that's pretty much how it felt. Which sucks really. But oh well.
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Date: 2019-05-22 02:20 am (UTC)He's just a narrative device or a gimmick. He was slightly more interesting in the books though. Jon...sigh.
I do know S8 worked for a few people -- I have three of them on my flist who LOVED it. But it didn't work for my co-workers or myself, or a lot of critics. Reminds me a little of the Lost and BSG endings, and the MASH ending -- which all had similar split reactions.
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Date: 2019-05-22 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-22 01:43 am (UTC)But no, didn't like it either. Great cinematography though.
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Date: 2019-05-20 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 12:35 pm (UTC)Which raises the question of just what they did until they were big enough to ride an undead horse. Was there a White Walker Kindergarten up there somewhere? Did the Night King have to give horsey rides to White Walker toddlers? Did any of them ever go "You're not my real daddy! I didn't ask to be born!" and slam the door and blast Nirvana?
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Date: 2019-05-22 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-23 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-23 12:08 pm (UTC)Oh, according to my vague memory of what was in the books? Yes, the baby would grow up to be a White Walker.
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Date: 2019-05-22 01:40 am (UTC)Yep.
This is not a series you want to think too much about. And I agree with everything you stated above.
But, the cinematography is amazing. There are some beautiful shots in there. And Dinklage sells the hell out of his scenes, but if you listen to the words...ugh.
ETA: I've read all the other comments now -- I saw it last night, so late to the party. Find myself nodding along with all of them. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't good either. And I was deeply troubled by it.
The bit about giving "power to he who seeks it least" is a time-honored cliche, but I think somewhat confused with the reluctant hero trope. I've been thinking about it a lot since reading coffeeandink's post...and I'm starting to come around to thinking that there is a big difference between being corrupted by power and wanting to use or have power to help. Also, it could be argued that Trump didn't really want the power, he wanted to be a star, and was using the election to become that -- and got the power, because everyone was afraid of giving it to a woman who did want it, and did know how to effectively wield it. (I know I've actually heard people who voted for Trump use that argument, although they said "ineffectively wield it for her own gain.) Sorry for the political angle.
I read Emilia Clark's interview today and she says something interesting -- "that her character didn't have much development this season or the last two, and she struggled to figure out how to play it". And that S8 came as a shock to her. The writers told her they were going for Lawrence of Arabia, but I'm not sure the writers saw or understood Lawrence of Arabia?
Also, I laughed during the scene where the dragon melted the throne. It was too on the nose, beautifully filmed though.
After that -- everything was basically fan service. And the message -- said better by well Lawrence of Arabia and possibly the Avengers franchise.
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Date: 2019-05-23 06:04 am (UTC)In previous episodes, yes. I'm not so sure about this one. There are some nice shots, but it feels like it's trying a bit too hard (that scene of Drogon taking off behind Dany so she looks like she has wings cracked me up).
The writers told her they were going for Lawrence of Arabia, but I'm not sure the writers saw or understood Lawrence of Arabia?
...Huh. Well I mean, there is that scene in the middle of Lawrence where he goes crazy and starts randomly shooting people, but... um... huh.
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Date: 2019-05-23 12:10 pm (UTC)From a purely technical perspective -- that shot with the dragon was beautifully set up. I mean, if I turned off the sound and just looked at it...;-)
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Date: 2019-12-02 07:33 pm (UTC)It was pretty bad, but I can imagine how the story could have ended approximately the same way and been good. GRRM has some problems with his prose and attention, but I think he is a pretty good idea man, and I imagine that much of the ideas we see in the endgame would work with the proper amount of care. I would not describe this as "the proper amount of care." That said, my immediate reaction to the BSG finale was "this was a terrible idea" and my immediate reaction to this one is "this was terrible execution," so that tells you something. The cast and visuals are good though, of course.
Anyway, the most egregious issue is Dany's characterization, which is a shame because I think I get the general idea intended which makes some sense. Teenage queen gathers a set of oppressed peoples, freeing them through increasingly extreme violence, and then sets them upon a place that neither she nor they have any attachment to, and they suffer great losses because of the cruelty of Cersei and others. I mean, when your team is Dothraki, dragons, and Unsullied who are trained to define themselves as loyal soldier-warrior-(slaves who are no longer slaves but don't really have any other mindset available to them) and you're in what is actually a foreign land, then, sure: it's not actually a recipe for being a wise, just, understanding yadda yadda. But the proper presentation really should be "misunderstandings based on an inability to read Westeros and a persistent expectation of greater threat," and they didn't show that. And if they wanted to really go for the "revolutionary zeal" they could have had her decide she wanted to smash all the great houses or something, rather than the WE WILL USHER IN PARADISE, ONE CHARRED CITY AT A TIME stuff she was saying in the finale. I thought she was intermittently okay up until the moment she ignored the bells and burned everyone, and there wasn't even really an explanation of what she was thinking, so. That's that.
On a related topic, and this might be a problem with Martin more so than Benioff/Weiss, but is it just me or did the Jon/Aegon revelation...not actually matter? I mean, the exact mechanism by which Varys died or whatever would have been different, but basically Dany went MAD WITH POWER anyway. Sansa was already angling for the North to be separate and so she didn't even really require Jon to take the throne, Arya had already checked out of politics beyond "she is a bad dude, be careful" and Tyrion and Varys were already beyond "actual succession rules" as a reason for choosing a monarch. Definitely it worked to isolate Danaerys more, but.... I wonder if the only *serious* impact is maybe it was necessary for Jon to believe himself to be By Succession The Trueborn Heir in order to have the guts to stab Dany, but that just makes him look worse.
...which is *maybe* the point? I feel like careful emotional lifting wasn't the strength of these episodes, but basically the repeated insistence that Jon doesn't want the crown (that's what makes him so great! fuck off Varys) (I'm joking Varys I love you) just makes him look...I don't know, petulant and cowardly. It's all a little fuzzy but I hope the idea was that Varys was executed for treason for sending one of his little birds to stab the queen (how did he get found out? why is he so incompetent only now?) rather than for gently talking to Jon, but the bottom line is that by the rules of succession that give Daenerys the throne, Jon is the trueborn king. Granting for the moment that Dany being ~mad with power~ will not let him take the throne...there is at least a strong possibility that Jon can avoid stabbing Dany to death and then being executed, or whatever, by *just defending his claim to the throne*. Of course Dany is being characterized...the way she's being characterized, but the thing is that if I understand my Targaryan Dynasty Ethics, it's fine to burn cities alive if they are being held by your enemies, but you still have to follow the actual rules of succession, which means that if Jon makes his claim, he's the king, end of story, and she has no leg to stand on. I guess Dany won't go for it, but I don't really know what her justification for it would be.
It just goes back to the central problem. We are meant to understand that she's MAD WITH POWER and fine, but she still has her set of beliefs and there's no effort to actually show what those are. That's a general problem with the whole Jon/Aegon thing with Dany: the reveal happens, and then there's only intermittent "oh yeah they're an aunt and nephew fucking" mentions from supporting characters but basically they don't really notice or care, and Dany never once appears to consider that her own value system should demand that Jon take the throne. Of course she may believe she'd be the better ruler, but that's not the point, is it? I guess it is -- DESTINY and all that -- but it's still *because she's the heir to the throne which was usurped*. That's sort of the problem: Dany begging Jon personally to keep it a secret because she wants the throne and he doesn't? Good. Dany ordering him as queen? Doesn't work. Jon being so adamant about not wanting the throne for so long means the conversation is only ever about how to prevent other people from continually pushing Jon to the throne, and never about whether Dany would accept his claim, which by her own value system would appear to be the better one. And so she needs to be stabbed rather than Jon being able to say "look, I'm sorry but you suck at this, I'll take over."
Relatedly, the idea that Jon stabbing Dany is a solution is itself kind of crazy -- I mean, like, you are seriously telling me that the Dothraki and Unsullied and Drogon are all going to just chill out and stop looting and pillaging and burning and killing once Dany is dead? That's your master plan? *Maybe* it'd be less violent "in the long run" to just have a disorganized mass of crazed fighters reaping bloody revenge than a multigenerational wheel-breaking crusade, but there's no evidence that anyone has thought this through, and it seems like we're supposed to accept the idea that the (often superficial) people of this world who supported golden-haired, beautiful Daenerys Targaryan are on board with acknowledging the legitimacy of the rule of...the wheelchair-bound weirdo affectless creepy brother (technically cousin but people don't know that) of the guy who killed her, with the hand being the reviled Imp who arranged for him to kill her. The main explanation seems to be that Grey Worm doesn't actually give a fuck, and that's certainly a wise call on his part, but we're also supposed to assume that Grey Worm is also unwilling to let someone who does give a fuck make any decisions. Anyway, this all goes down to the problem that the only reason Jon could stab Dany in the first place is probably because they know there's an alternative (possibly) better than Dany in Jon, but that only works if Jon is willing to at least be considered, and the idea that *instead* Tyrion can just suggest whoever the fuck he wants and people will go along with it doesn't really match with the Westeros I know. Jon commits regicide and so his siblings now get to be rulers of two different places that would apparently be Dany's? And people who have no idea about his Aegon stuff think this is fine as long as he goes to the Night's Watch?
HOW COULD A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE NOT MENTION TYRION. HE WAS THE HAND OR ACTING HAND TO THREE DIFFERENT MONARCHS FFS AND WAS CONVICTED OF KILLING ONE THE KING, KILLED ANOTHER ACTUAL HAND AND SUGGESTED THE ASSASSINATION OF ANOTHER QUEEN. HOLY SHIT.
OK so maybe they are bad ideas. :) I guess though with some moving of various pieces around I can see how it could get to the point where a private assassination seems the best option for Jon with Dany, and so on.
(I did like the dragon burning the throne though.)
///
One thing that bugs me about this series and character endings: there's a lot of mealy-mouthed stuff where characters have to choose between two things -- between what they once thought they wanted, and what they maybe now want -- and then they choose one and then go and choose the other. It just feels like they are trying to have it both ways -- like there's where character growth will take them, and then what fanservice demands. I feel like the biggest example is with Jaime. Jaime running off to fight in the North because he *gave his word* even though he's basically useless as a fighter and it means betraying Cersei is *badass*. His knighting Brienne (and sleeping with her, yeah, but especially knighting her) is something else. But yeah then he goes back to Cersei because he decides he's not better than that and then they die with him declaring nothing matters besides them. And then after they get that character death, Brienne writes the positive he's-redeemed-himself version of the story. It's like they need to tell both the story of the man whose perverse undying love destroys him but never fails, and the one who is moved to change and redeem himself by the example of a brave and noble person, and they just can't pick one or the other. And I mean, it is a tension baked into the character and has been since he met Brienne, but at a certain point it gets frustrating, and it feels like Jaime's backsliding is only written as "I don't deserve any better" because they can't figure out a better reason for him to go back on the choice he's just made. And they have him still fight Euron pointlessly because it's like they are unable to actually come up with any variations on what types of stories this guy can be in besides "he's a fighter," even though that was taken from him years ago.
Not to be a backseat writer, but: imagine if, for instance, the story was allowed to spread out over longer in story time (which is what should happen anyway, given the distances), and Jaime goes back to *save the baby*, not because he's suddenly Learned The Lessons Of Fatherhood or some bullshit, but because he realizes that he still loves Cersei *and* that there's a way he can show that without merely letting himself be destroyed by her. He plans to sacrifice himself for Cersei but ends up being stuck as a single father with a mewling infant, and realizes that maybe he's able to love this one. He has to leave Brienne but he realizes he actually does love Brienne. Etc. It's a way that combines the various elements of the story but in a way that suggests the possibility of growth and change for him, Cersei and Brienne without being too soppy. It can make up for poor fatherhood to his "nieces and nephew" his incompetently bungling Myrcella's rescue (though to be honest yes it's probably for the best for the show to avoid bringing that up). I feel like to have Jaime's love for Brienne (and Tyrion, though that's always been present) be enough to create a spark that allows him to actually affect some kind of positive change in Cersei is the right way to pay off the conflicts of his "obsessively loving evil woman to exclusion of all others, starting to love good woman" character bible.
I guess it's not really that I think Jaime has shown that he's that serious about redemption or whatever, but I feel like the show keeps pushing that he's come to *some* moral awareness and *some* level of recognition that there are other kinds of feelings inside him besides for Cersei, but then it won't let him actually grow out of it.
Or, to put it another way, the main model for Jaime/Cersei is a Spike/Drusilla where Spike just will never move onto Buffy. But what if it becomes Angel/Darla? The show has already shown how poisonous Cersei's love for her children can be that I don't think it's in *that* much danger of going full "the power of motherhood redeems" but having Jaime realize there may be some way to save a part of Cersei, using some of the bits of non-perverse humanity he learned from Brienne (whether it's via a baby or whether it's genuinely to succeed in Tyrion's plan of getting her to safety, or *whatever*) would be cooler than "the twins are perpetually in their own world until the rubble falls on them" as a place to end after eight seasons.
With Arya it's sort of similar, in that she's supposed to learn in the second last episode that Revenge Doesn't Pay, from the Hound? Sorry, she's just learning *now* that she shouldn't only kill Cersei? And just because the Hound told her to? Unlike with Jaime they have her go the other way and not be killed by her fatal flaw but for her to be running off in secret because of Her List after she's killed the fucking Night King and then she just gets talked down by a tiny speech feels false. And you know, it's not that much of a sacrifice when Cersei is going to die anyway, which I know is part of the point, but it feels like too little to really matter for Arya.
And it just sort of happens all over the place -- the Hound can't escape the vengeance against his brother etc., but he had that redemption story with Al Swerengen, but not really; Tormond/Brienne or Jaime/Brienne? goes around and around, of whether or not they are actually joking or not with Tormund, and they settle on "it's a joke, of course it's her and Jaime," but kind of disappointingly when they're going to have him run off in a second anyway. It feels very fanservicey that the characters can only be a certain thing when there are some other elements of the story that keep pushing at the edges to have interesting things happen.
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Date: 2019-12-03 12:01 am (UTC)Anyway, the most egregious issue is Dany's characterization, which is a shame because I think I get the general idea intended which makes some sense. (...) and there wasn't even really an explanation of what she was thinking, so.
It does, but there's a huge storytelling problem here that I'm not sure how they could have solved - but I'm almost sure they didn't even see the problem. A lot of people pointed out ways they could have had Dany's actions make more sense (one of my favourites: Don't kill the other dragon in the previous episode - have Dany attack KL with two dragons, and then have one of them get killed by a lone sniper just after the city surrenders, so that Dany's actions come from a place of shock and grief shared by the audience). But the problem with that is, they don't WANT the audience to be on Dany's side; we're supposed to suddenly think she's nothing but a dangerous dictator who Must Be Stopped At All Cost. After EIGHT SEASONS of building her up as a protagonist. They can't (or don't think they can) afford to have the story be ambiguous here; Jon must be justified. (You can't sell Buffy killing Angel if Acathla never actually opens up.)
Dany never once appears to consider that her own value system should demand that Jon take the throne.
True, and that would open up a lot of potential story with the Aegon thing, as opposed to just have Jon tell everyone who'd listen that he didn't want to be king, waaah. But then again Dany doesn't seem to have any form of value system whatsoever in the last few episodes.
Relatedly, the idea that Jon stabbing Dany is a solution is itself kind of crazy -- I mean, like, you are seriously telling me that the Dothraki and Unsullied and Drogon are all going to just chill out and stop looting and pillaging and burning and killing once Dany is dead?
Hey, it worked for the Night King. That's how you solve problems in a world run on complex politics. That's why the kingdom was famously at peace for decades after Jaime killed the Mad King.
HOW COULD A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE NOT MENTION TYRION. HE WAS THE HAND OR ACTING HAND TO THREE DIFFERENT MONARCHS FFS AND WAS CONVICTED OF KILLING ONE THE KING, KILLED ANOTHER ACTUAL HAND AND SUGGESTED THE ASSASSINATION OF ANOTHER QUEEN. HOLY SHIT.
And begs the question of which important character whose actions explain everything was left out of the version of the story that WE got to see.
(I did like the dragon burning the throne though.)
One thing that bugs me about this series and character endings: there's a lot of mealy-mouthed stuff where characters have to choose between two things -- between what they once thought they wanted, and what they maybe now want -- and then they choose one and then go and choose the other. It just feels like they are trying to have it both ways -- like there's where character growth will take them, and then what fanservice demands.
Yeah.
It's like they need to tell both the story of the man whose perverse undying love destroys him but never fails, and the one who is moved to change and redeem himself by the example of a brave and noble person, and they just can't pick one or the other. And I mean, it is a tension baked into the character and has been since he met Brienne, but at a certain point it gets frustrating, and it feels like Jaime's backsliding is only written as "I don't deserve any better" because they can't figure out a better reason for him to go back on the choice he's just made. And they have him still fight Euron pointlessly because it's like they are unable to actually come up with any variations on what types of stories this guy can be in besides "he's a fighter," even though that was taken from him years ago.
OH yeah. And I mean, they could have sold this if the show had allowed for ambiguity, for the surviving characters possibly being wrong in their reading of the story. But under D&D, it just doesn't. That could have saved this ending; if we'd just had some clue that just maybe Jon wildly misread Dany's goals and killed her over nothing, that Tyrion's idea of Bran The Broken might really be as dumb as it looks, that Brienne's image of Jaime is partly her own need to see him redeemed rather than him actually being redeemed... But that would require them to have actual character beats as opposed to just a story that takes us from A to B to Z.
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Date: 2019-12-03 06:38 am (UTC)It does, but there's a huge storytelling problem here that I'm not sure how they could have solved - but I'm almost sure they didn't even see the problem. A lot of people pointed out ways they could have had Dany's actions make more sense (one of my favourites: Don't kill the other dragon in the previous episode - have Dany attack KL with two dragons, and then have one of them get killed by a lone sniper just after the city surrenders, so that Dany's actions come from a place of shock and grief shared by the audience). But the problem with that is, they don't WANT the audience to be on Dany's side; we're supposed to suddenly think she's nothing but a dangerous dictator who Must Be Stopped At All Cost. After EIGHT SEASONS of building her up as a protagonist. They can't (or don't think they can) afford to have the story be ambiguous here; Jon must be justified. (You can't sell Buffy killing Angel if Acathla never actually opens up.)
I think the main storytelling choice they could have made would be to just write up the impasse. The thing is, the show used to be able to do this, at least to a degree: we can root for both Tyrion and Davos at Blackwater. But I guess the problem is that we weren't really expected to root for Stannis or Tywin (or Joffrey, heaven forbid). (It was cute to have Davos correct someone's grammar.) Now that the people we are supposed to root for are the ones calling the shots, we can't rely on "that are loyal to their superiors" anymore as an explanation.
The Acathla comparison also helps maybe because their choice of way in which Dany dies forces them to make her SO BAD. I mean, Jon stabs her after what is in form if not content basically a state of the union address, when she has offered no specific plan for what her next proximate goal is. So she has to be a danger to an *unspecified number of people* where it's clear she can't be talked out of *future evil plans*. You have to make her not just dangerous but completely unhinged and evil and give her an unambiguously wrong death count in order to sell it. By contrast, have Jon kill her mid battle (say, put him and Dany both on Drogon's back, for instance, and have him realize the only way to stop the carnage is to stab Drogon in some previously established weak spot and bring them all down) and it doesn't matter whether Dany could later be calmed down, it's only about the present threat.
OH yeah. And I mean, they could have sold this if the show had allowed for ambiguity, for the surviving characters possibly being wrong in their reading of the story. But under D&D, it just doesn't. That could have saved this ending; if we'd just had some clue that just maybe Jon wildly misread Dany's goals and killed her over nothing, that Tyrion's idea of Bran The Broken might really be as dumb as it looks, that Brienne's image of Jaime is partly her own need to see him redeemed rather than him actually being redeemed... But that would require them to have actual character beats as opposed to just a story that takes us from A to B to Z.
Right. We've already established in the series that Tyrion has poor judgment after being locked up for weeks, after all. But yes there's curiously little ambiguity in any of this. That Sansa had just the right amount of trauma to be a good ruler and only execute the crummiest of her advisers is taken as read. Have we seen any evidence that Bran can lead more than at most his tiny cadre, or that he's capable of empathizing enough with humans to be able to make good decisions for them? Bronn being good at conning people gives him the correct skill set for high finance? (The last one is meant to be a joke but still.) Cersei makes, as far as I can tell, no decisions in this entire season (even when to screw Euron is mostly pressed by him), and her entire character is flattened to "evil but she does love her children, and Jaime," whereas there was a time when the show would find ways to wring sympathy out of her situation while having her make horrific choices. Sam and Gilly end up in a traditional family unit (?!). Bran says "You're a good man, Theon," and we know it has to be true because it's the three eyed raven talking. I was moved by the last one, and I want it to be true that Bran was not giving an objective judgment but recognized what Theon needed at that moment and decided to be kind (Theon wants to be a good man, now, even if he didn't want that in the past), but there's so little indication of Bran being other than a voice of dispassionate truth that it feels like that's that.
I watched a special feature today and basically it seems GRRM told D&D that Bran was going to be the king but that the details weren't worked out, but that D&D came up with Jon stabbing Dany as their climax. And that does maybe make sense to me. Again, GRRM's writing has problems, but I think he's got a handle on the genre anyway, of what level of fantasy realpolitik we're talking about: having Jon stab Dany in the throne room and this ending bloodshed rather than just creating another cycle of it could *maybe* work, but mostly feels like a misunderstanding of what world this was depicted as.