I assume from that the books will end the same for some characters, but not others. But at least from that post, he seems happy with the way the show ended. Of course, he might not want to trash the show, in order not to annoy HBO, and also not to reduce its value, since he’s still going to be making money on it on repeat showings and DVD releases. And he’s also not going to say anything specific about the ending, since that could affect how the remaining books are received.
If you’re not outraged or complaining, then people are very likely not talking about you. If you’re signing petitions demanding a rewrite or threatening to sue the show runners for lost revenues, it’s very incredibly unlikely that people are directing things at you.
Haven’t seen that anywhere. I have certainly said that if you expect GOT, a series noted for deliberately taking aim at the trope of ‘good characters triumph for being nice’ to suddenly adopt the trope then you’ve missed something. And that if you consider it out of character for a character who’s been speaking longing of her desire to burn cities to the ground for six seasons to fianlly burn a city to the ground, you’ve failed to understand that character at lease.
And you guys are being weird. And I’m not the first to try to point it out.
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It’s relevant because an error like a coffee cup in a scene is not a “Shortcut.” It’s an error, and one that is very common in TV and movies.
Whatever one’s criticisms of the shortness of Season 8, the idea they somehow took the easy way out on filming the scenes they DID film is just absurd. One episode took two months to film, a period of time longer than some Oscar-winning movies have taken.
What are you talking about? You’ve moved the goalposts from the bombing of Dresden–which occurred in 1945, when the Nazis were weakened—as I said—to generalized bombing in Europe throughout the war. Apparently your purpose in changing the subject in this way is so that you can claim that my remark about the Nazis being weakened (which they were by 1945–when, again, the bombing of Dresden occurred!) was intended to refer to 1941. Which it wasn’t.
You went through an out-of-left-field change of topic, it would seem, for the chance to say I was wrong. Incorrectly and without justification.
For a reminder that the topic was the firebombing of Dresden----not the general topic of bombing in WW2 Europe throughout the war----see your own post #96, quoted below.
The entire defense-of-the-GoT-writers as regards Dresden is feeble. There is no valid analogy to be had, there. In your earlier post you attempted to make the case that because the bombers at Dresden were regarded as heroes, then the GoT character Dany might have expected to have been seen as a hero, too—making her decision to murder thousands of civilians a ‘rational’ one:
The glaringly obvious problem with this argument is that the Dresden bombers had the approval of the Allied world because they were acting to stop the Nazi aggression over Europe and beyond.
No such situation obtained in Game of Thrones. Dany was not acting to stop an invader who had conquered the Westeros land mass and all its peoples. (Of course Dany was the invader who hoped to conquer the Westeros land mass and all its peoples.)
The Dresden bombers were acting to stop Nazi aggression. Dany was not acting to stop an aggressive conqueror whose military forces had overrun the entire landmass.
The Dresden bombers may have been regarded as heroes by all who wanted Nazi military conquest stopped.
There was no chance Dany would be seen as a hero. She was the (would-be) military conqueror of the entire land mass—she was not the savior from a military conqueror of the entire land mass (as the Dresden bombers, arguably, were).
The analogy fails. The defense of the GoT writing fails.
Back to your more recent post:
By this argument, participating in war is the exact same thing as taking deliberate personal action to cause the deaths of innocent civilians.
Hell, in earlier times it was fairly common to burn your OWN city to the ground to prevent enemy armies from using them for supply and shelter. For example, the Russians employed scorched earth tactics against Napoleon’s army, including putting Moscow to the torch before the French arrived.
Cities were routinely sacked in warfare, and sometimes after the war was over as an object lesson. Cities were sometimes given ultimatums that they either surrender or face siege, and if they were besieged and lost the invaders would kill everyone in the city as a lesson to the next city that forces a long, expensive siege.
Also, King’s Landing wasn’t completely destroyed. We actually saw maybe a third of the city burning. We can assume a bit more was burned that we didn’t see. But the Red Keep was still largely intact, as were the streets around it. Also, it seems that the dragonfire was somewhat selective, as lots of stuff was burned but the buildings on the sides of the streets were still standing. Given the explody power of Drogon’s fire when attacking the Red Keep, if he had hit those streets at full power there would have been nothing but piles of rubble.
Also, don’t be surprised by how fast a low-tech city can be rebuilt. Labor is cheap, and the infrastructure minimal. If the buildings are standing and the roads aren’t melted, things will be up and running very quickly.
Finally, note that at the end of the story they are talking about improving the sewers of King’s Landing, not engaging in wholesale rebuilding of everything. If they’re upgrading sewers, the city isn’t destroyed.
Ironically, that is EXACTLY the trope the writers DID adopt. Dany went unambiguous black hat and was killed. Jon and Tyrion remained “good” and triumphed, because of their goodness. The reason I hated Dany’s turn to Obvious Evil because it was so clearly setting up a feel good ending where the heroes win and the villains are punished. It robbed Dany of her complexity, and made her role in the narrative less complex - or were those cringey Nazi allusions meant to be layered storytelling?
Ugh, with this. Don’t you see how arrogant this comes across, how dismissive of any discussion? I didn’t fail to understand her character; I just disagree with you. Sure, she said some stuff and did some other stuff; she said and did a lot. And on the whole, the writers did not convince me that Dany would deliberately murder children under the circumstances shown. That she did so therefore felt to me like a naked plot device setting up an easy resolution. I’m not wrong; nobody has to be wrong here.
I am glad you we’re sold on the plot. Many others were. I was not. Many others were not. Neither group is objectively right, and trying to use your opinion on a fictional story to exert some weird superiority over people who disagree with you is a weird look.
I agree with this. There are definitely types of criticism that I think are out of bounds of reason, and the petition, the proposed lawsuit, etc. are in that category. But complaining that Dany’s turn to genocide wasn’t sufficiently supported? That’s well within bounds of reasonable discussion, even if I disagree with it. A person can be a completely hopeless Westeros dork who needs to get out of the house because they’ve memorized every word of every episode and every book, and still disagree with me on Dany’s characterization. That’s cool.
I grabbed Dresden because it was a pretty well known example of a city being flattened by “good guys,” not because I felt that WWII was a perfect mapping onto a story which - again - I haven’t actually seen. I’m not interested in defending the writing of Game of Thrones. I gave up on the books after two, and the TV show after a single episode. I’m just interested in your claim that razing a city could only be the act of a lunatic, and that it couldn’t possibly have any strategic benefit.
So, okay, forget Dresden. Dresden was a bad example. Instead, pick any of these cities that were famously burned to the ground by conquerors:
She would have been if she’d won. And if the Nazis had won WWII, the Dresden bomber crews would have been reviled as monsters. Because that’s how history works.
Uh, no. Starting a war unprovoked purely for personal gain and advancement is taking deliberate action to cause the deaths of innocents.
Errors happen when you rush. Errors happen when you give your post production team unrealised deadlines to push out a massive episode that took months to film. I will concede the coffee cup (and water bottle), though, if it makes life easier. It isn’t the only thing that supports my point, so it’s not a mountain I’m willing to die on - I’m aware that has been similiar errors throughout (perhaps it’s more symbolic than anything).
The evidence of their haste is insurmountable. They just kind of forgot that Jamie didn’t stangle his cousin, the showrunners were unaware that Samwell was the older brother (despite it being a major point in his relationship with his father), they didn’t take the time to learn that Gendry’s bastard name should have been Waters.
They didn’t give Dany enough time to morph into villian, they didn’t give Brienne and Jamie’s relationship enough time (they get together and break up in a single jarring episode). Everything is plotted conveniently and efficiently and the show suffered as a result in almost every aspect of the production process. Did they even take the time to test episode 3 on various resolutions to see if you could actually see what was going on? Doesn’t seem so.
I have not made that claim. Your attribution of that claim to me (my emphasis) is false.
The only claims I have made have been about the show, and the plausibility of its plot developments.
No. This is nothing to do with ‘history is written by the victors.’ This is about whether or not there was a military conqueror occupying Westeros, whose forces Dany could expel (and thereby win acclaim for her choice to burn KL as a strategic move).
There was no such situation in Westeros.
Again: Dany could not have been the savior of Westeros from a military conqueror of the entire land mass, because there was no miliary conqueror of the entire land mass. There was no military conqueror of Westeros to be expelled. *There were no Nazi-equivalent conquerors occupying Westeros. *
There was a woman who had been crowned Queen, in Kings Landing. But that woman was not the head of an occupying force that was encamped all over the land mass. She was just a woman who had a fighting force sufficient to hold the capital—well, no—not even that. She didn’t have even that. She had to borrow money from the Iron Bank to hire mercenary fighters, in order to have any hope of holding the capital.
Again: the analogy fails. The situation in WW2 Europe was nothing like the situation in Martin’s story.
Dany could not have been seen as destroying much of a city in order to expel a conqueror----because there was no such entity to be expelled.
In WW2, the Dresden bombers were seen by many as doing what they did to save Europe (and beyond) from a military conqueror: the Nazis who’d invaded and taken over many European nations (and more). So the bombers did what they did to a certain amount of acclaim. They had the moral high ground. They were trying to expel a military force that had committed aggression against many nations.
In Westeros, there was no such military force occupying Westeros. Yet again: the analogy fails.
Yeah, I call bullshit. Your first post in this thread contained the following:
All of that is just plain wrong, and that’s what we’re responding to. Why would she never be able to rule after that? Why couldn’t she trust guards not to assassinate her? Why would no moment away from her dragon ever be safe for her?
Throughout real-world history rulers have done worse and not suffered any of those issues that you claim must necessarily be a direct consequence of their actions.
Nothing in the post you quoted contained what Miller claimed:
As I said to Miller,
I have made no claims about real-life examples of city-destruction being limited to being “only the act of a lunatic” or not possibly having “any strategic benefit,” to quote Miller’s false statement. So the substance you called is entirely your own.
All you are doing is repeating the same bad argument again and again. See posts 52, 54, 99, 119, 122, 130, 146, and 155 for dissection of that bad argument.
If and when you come up with a new argument, I’ll be happy to respond to it.
The Unsullied and Dothraki wouldn’t have been likely to care about Daenerys murdering thousands of Kings Landing residents (as I assume you were saying, here). But if she were going to rule the Westeros land mass (or ‘Seven Kingdoms’), she would have to be interacting with people other than Unsullied and Dothraki, on a fairly regular basis.