Tywin Lannister, who hired Arya Stark as a serving girl? That Tywin?
It’s hubris. And arrogance. Benioff and Weiss saved the final four episodes for themselves. But who are they? Weiss has one writing credit before G of T. Benioff has several, but they are mostly adaptations. After years of getting kudos working off Martin’s source material, they acted as if it was easy. Anybody can do it. Intricate plotting, entertaining dialogue, compelling story lines…no problem, piece of cake, I guess not.
Alright, I wasn’t going to post anything about this in this thread, but can we please stop the fucking GRRM worship? You know what his ending is? Nothing. He’s just not going to do it. Creating an interesting beginning and middle of a story is easier than sticking a complex ending. That’s why he’s not even going to bother. And apparently this is his best move, because his fans are just going to assume that his ending would’ve been awesome with him not even bothering to do it.
The showrunners don’t have the option of just deciding not to finish it, so they’re stuck trying to land the complex ending. They’re largely failing at it. But I’m so tired of hearing about how dumb the show writers are how much better the great GRRM would do it. Well, he’s not going to, probably because he can’t.
He had 9 years during the show’s run to give a good ending that they could adapt. He didn’t. So a lot of the criticism here should go to him, but instead people worship him even though he has completely failed here. The idea that he should be praised because of some imaginary ending he never wrote and will never write instead of being criticized is maddening.
I’m fine with criticizing the decline in the quality of writing of the show - I’m doing that as much as anyone. But I’m tired of all of the “oh the show runners are just morons who never knew how to write and only tricked audiences into thinking the first few seasons are good because of the infallible GRRM” bullshit.
Also, I disagree with everyone here that Jon would be a terrible king. Yes, he wouldn’t be the best king. He wouldn’t be a savvy or a clever king. But he would be a good and decent king. Some of you cast doubt on his ability to inspire people - but that’s clearly shown to be false. There are a lot of ways of inspiring people. He’s not getting there through great speeches or clever plots or great propaganda. He inspires people because he’s willing to do what’s right, and what’s hard, and what needs to be done. He’s willing to sacrifice himself for others, and for the good of the world. He’s proven that over and over again.
Yes, he’s not flawless. He feels too bound by his strong sense of honor, which would occasionally lead him to make bad or impractical decisions. But people would respect a king that always tried to do the right thing, who always acted honorably, and who always walked the walk.
Jon is not a tyrant. He doesn’t want to rule. He does everything out of a sense of obligation. A duty to serve. He had to save the world because someone had to do it. He gave everything, repeatedly, to do what he felt was right and what was best for all of humanity. He brought disparate factions together. He proved his willingness to sacrifice, literally giving his life in service of humanity. He’s not greedy, he’s not mad for power, and he’s essentially not corruptible. You could have a far, far worse king.
Given all the options, I would be 100% behind Jon as king if I were in this world.
I wish I could disagree with you, but… I did think that A Dance with Dragons was a huge drop in quality.
Yes, but he’s so dumb and guileless, it would be weeks before Westeros was invaded by practically any neighboring country with a modicum of military knowledge.
There aren’t really “neighboring countries” - there are city states on the only other inhabited content, and they’ve shown no inclination or ability to launch a cross-sea invasion of Westeros.
And I disagree. He’s an experienced field commander, and while not the best, he’s not a military weakling. He’d also likely be competent enough to be able to pick decent generals. If you want to make the argument that “sure, we’re told he’s a competent military man, since we’re shown him winning battles, but you can easily pick apart his strategies…” that really applies to everyone in Westeros, since the battle tactics in most of the battles we’ve seen are lacking in terms of actual military competence.
Yeah, of all the weaknesses Jon would have as king,“getting invaded” isn’t one of them. The one (and possibly only) real qualification he has is as a military commander. And yeah, all his military command decisions are ridiculously bad, but I’m pretty sure every single military command decision in the entire show, by any character, is also ridiculously bad, so his military bona fides stack up quite nicely among his peers.
I dunno, the White Walkers battle plan was actually pretty decent.
Nice strawman you invented. Nobody is “worshipping” Martin, but he’s clearly a better storyteller than the showrunners.
You’re the one whose been babbling about the writing and plots being dumbed down for the unsophisticated masses. Make up your mind.
Martin was very good at getting all his toys out as long as he was expanding the scope of his narrative. From the point where he needs to put his toys away and start contracting and tying off loose ends it’s been clear Martin doesn’t have a clue what to do with ~95% of his dangling plot points. D&D have clearly been given an outline of an ending and not much more, because Martin has no clue how to do much more.
Agreed. Assuming a coming bloodbath, which is fair to assume, Gendry’s only experience with the Iron Throne, the Iron Bank, and the Iron Islanders is, as a blacksmith, metaphorical. One way out would be for some kick-ass would-be queen to realize this about the same time she realizes she’s carrying his child.
You may be right. I’m not sure anyone will really care what Martin comes up with going forward. On the other hand, if Martin wrote the battle of Winterfell, Jaime, Brienne, Grey Worm, The Hound and many others would have died then and there. Dead people don’t have unresolved plot issues. And I also doubt he would have had the Iron Islanders hiding behind a rock…boo, lol, surprise your all dead from our magic spear throwing machines.
Actually, I think the best military commander we’ve seen has been Ramsay Bolton. He was only finally defeated by the unexpected arrival of the [del]Seventh Cavalry[/del] Knights of the Vale, so that was perhaps a scouting failure. But of course, he benefited by the stupid decisions of his opponents.
He is right that the fault lies entirely with Martin though.
I’m not a GRRM worshipper. In fact, I thought the show was better than the books because they trimmed the story, and it needed trimming.
However, during the last seasons, the show has seriously lacked consistency and originality. GRRM might not write an ending as good as some hope for, but he will do (or would have done) better than that.
Having watched about 3 episodes of this…
Pretty sure it would have been a disaster.
Gendry would make a fine figurehead. Gendry may not know how to rule, but Varys, Tyrion, Sansa, and a few others do. When all your Kings and Queens are dead, you find someone with a claim to the throne and prop them up and run the kingdom from behind the scenes. All you need is a nice looking, pedigreed King who can be trained to not say stupid things while rubber-stamping the plans of the actual rulers.
But I suspect the scene giving Gendry a Lordship and clarifying his birth was just closure and fan service. Gendry is now one loose end we don’t have to think about after the show ends. If they didn’t have that scene, a lot of fans will be saying, “Jeez, we’ve been talking about Gendry for 8 years, and they just drop him? What happened to him? What about his royal blood?”
The book/show spoiler thread is a better place for this discussion, so I replied there. If you (and this goes for everyone) want to continue debating the merits of the show writers vs GRRM, it’d be better to take it to that thread.
Ha, the internet has totally turned against GoT now. Here’s a reddit thread for an example.
A bunch of out of context interview clips in which the cast was basically resisting interviewers attempts to get spoilers = proof of the worst show ever. People are just competing to go overboard to say just how bad everything is, competing to see who can bash it the most.
Many of these same people were just singing the praises of how amazing 8.03 was just a couple of weeks ago.
It’s not that it’s wrong to be critical of season 8 - I’ve done a lot of that here - it’s just that I find it pathetic that people can’t form their own opinions. There’s a thread in cafe society now that involves beer and wine snobbery and how people basically will tell you if a beer or wine is good based on how they’re supposed to think, or how they think other people think, rather than coming up with their own opinions. It’s sort of the same thing here. When they thought we were all supposed to love Game of Thrones, they throw lavish praise onto season 8, and then when the internet hive mind starts to turn, and it becomes fashionable to be critical of season 8, suddenly everyone is jumping in with “OMG it’s the worst season ever! no one involved in the show can possibly create anything good!”
I think the SDMB is largely immune to this, and that’s why I come here to discuss these things. I think most of you have very much formed your own opinions. But the larger internet is just trying to fit in and ride the wave of praise or disappointment, whatever they perceive to be happening in the hive mind.
Honestly, it’s hard to tell what the King/Queen of the Seven Kingdoms even does aside from managing relationships with major nobles. Even the military is largely regional. That’s what a “Warden” is - it’s the regional commander-in-chief of the military.
In ASOIAF/GOT canon this is not an unimportant thing. The story we’re watching has characters who were veterans of the last invasion of Westeros, the War of the Ninepenny Kings. Invasions of Westeros are still very much a part of recent history and concern to these folks. I mean, the fact the continent is a single state is because of an invasion, one not much less recent to them than the American Revolution is to us.
The only reason the disparate regions even have to rebel is if the monarch is a particularly egregious ass-hat. You have to be an actual sociopath to have a rebellion against you.