Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[Teleku]

Or maybe just try this on their next attack:

[Khaldun]

There was Sam flipping out on Dany with Jon because she burned his father and brother to death.  That's also when I started to have doubts about her.  This may be the writers trying to make some preparation for a Crazy Dany storyline.

Because his father and brother fought against her in support of the Lannisters and then refused to surrender to her unconditionally.

What the fuck do you think happens to people in most wars who do that? Even when they're fighting a basically decent enemy?

[Rendakor]

Even if Dany does decide to go all Mad Queen, how are we supposed to believe her dragon can do any damage when we have Dragonbane Ballistae on the walls and Euron's Magic Fleet in the harbor? 2 or 3 dragons vs 1 epic ballista is an interesting gambit: a dragon's probably going to die but once you take out Chekov's Crossbow you have the upper hand. Now that the weapons have entered mass production and murdered Rhaegal in seconds, the lot of them against the sole remaining dragon should be a sure thing for Cersei.

Fakeedit:

There was Sam flipping out on Dany with Jon because she burned his father and brother to death.  That's also when I started to have doubts about her.  This may be the writers trying to make some preparation for a Crazy Dany storyline.

Because his father and brother fought against her in support of the Lannisters and then refused to surrender to her unconditionally.

What the fuck do you think happens to people in most wars who do that? Even when they're fighting a basically decent enemy?

They probably would have been sent north to take the black; remember how Joffery was evil for killing Ned? Even if the Tarlys had been beheaded instead of burned alive, it would have made Dany look less crazy.

[Polysorbate80]

Best I can hope for at this point is Jon on the Iron Throne, Dany packs it in and goes back to Essos where people actually like her.  Most people die in hopefully at least interesting if not grisly ways.  Don't really care who as long as it's a significant number.

And Drogon turns out to be a mom and pops out some eggs before dying.  Because does anyone alive even know how to determine a flying lizard's sex anyway?

[Teleku]

They probably would have been sent north to take the black; remember how Joffery was evil for killing Ned? Even if the Tarlys had been beheaded instead of burned alive, it would have made Dany look less crazy.

They were actually specifically going to do that.  But Tarly announced that because she was not his Queen, she couldn't send him to the wall.  Tyrion kept giving the guy outs that entire scene and he all but demanded to be executed.  Then his dumb ass son, against his fathers will, decided he also just wanted to die for no reason.

[Riggswolfe]

They probably would have been sent north to take the black; remember how Joffery was evil for killing Ned? Even if the Tarlys had been beheaded instead of burned alive, it would have made Dany look less crazy.

They were actually specifically going to do that.  But Tarly announced that because she was not his Queen, she couldn't send him to the wall.  Tyrion kept giving the guy outs that entire scene and he all but demanded to be executed.  Then his dumb ass son, against his fathers will, decided he also just wanted to die for no reason.

The issue isn't that they were executed. That made sense in context and was a dumb ass thing for the Tarlies to force. The issue was she burnt them alive which is explicitly a reference to her insane father.

[calapine]

The issue isn't that they were executed. That made sense in context and was a dumb ass thing for the Tarlies to force. The issue was she burnt them alive which is explicitly a reference to her insane father.

Tomato, Potato. Do you want her to execute them with a greatsword? She isn't it Ned Stark.

I'm not against them doing the mad Queen thing.  It's just that it feels like it comes out of nowhere and is really forced with how fast they are moving things.  TV series Dany is still basically the least vicious ruler after Jon Snow left in the story.

This.

[Tebonas]

Wether she likes it or not, she is also fighting a PR war, and on that front immolation is a big loss. People are resentful like that.

I don't know how to do this without Godwining the thread. Lets just say if Germany reinstated the death penalty, they wouldn't be able to use all the same executions methods as other countries without backlash. Even if death equals death.

[MediumHigh]

Joffery wasn't evil for killing Ned. Joffery was evil for killing a man who made a plea deal to surrender. Not only was the Tarly choice not even the same in that context, the implicit difference between Joffery and Dany is  very plain. Tarly never surrendered, never attempted to make a deal, so he literally got what he deserves when dealing with Dany Targ. Granted Dany could have been merciful, forced him to surrender or apply leverage on him but Dany has never been that person. Dany never used politics to win. She used force, and granted the reasons why she uses force maybe noble, the end result is a lot of people who would be contesting her right to rule dead. Dany loses every time she takes the political victory. Take that for what it means but her inability to take political victories has never casted her in a negative light in show or been a sign of madness.

[Riggswolfe]

The issue isn't that they were executed. That made sense in context and was a dumb ass thing for the Tarlies to force. The issue was she burnt them alive which is explicitly a reference to her insane father.

Tomato, Potato. Do you want her to execute them with a greatsword? She isn't it Ned Stark.

She has soldiers to do the executing if needed. Jorah would've lopped their heads off no problem. By choosing to burn them to death she is explicitly making people wonder if she is following in her father's footsteps. It was a dumb decision, a cruel decision and a not so subtle sign that she may be going mad in the context of the history of her family.

[HaemishM]

Dany as mad queen is more believable than Sansa as a masterful game player because she acts like a bitch towards Dany.

Sansa's attempts to undermine Dany aren't about personal grudges. They've made it very clear that "the North remembers" and right now the North remembers that the only Southern king who didn't take the North for granted was drunk-ass Robert Baratheon, who probably only did that because of his friendship to Ned Stark and his love for Lyanna Stark. All the rest of them just expected the North to fight their wars for them, or going back 1000 years, to be the ones who take the brunt of the damage when "Winter comes." And when Sansa asks Dany "what about the North once you've gotten what you want?" the answer was silence. Just like every other Southern king or queen of late, including the ones who killed her brother(s) and her father for their petty throne games, the answer is basically assumed to be "you'll bend the knee and shut the fuck up about it."

Sansa has every reason not to trust Dany, and if Jon, someone she grew up with whose honor she believes in (even if she thinks he's a bit of a headstrong dumbass at times) and who is from the North has a better claim to the throne than Dany, it would be insane to think she wouldn't plot against Dany.

[Rendakor]

That might come across well in hypothetical books that we may or may not get. In the show it comes off as petty nonsense, either because of poor acting or writing (or both).

[HaemishM]

A whole lot of the characterization and logistics problems people are having can most easily be explained by the rush to get the show done in such a small number of episodes.

[Rendakor]

Which I still don't excuse. There's no reason Seasons 7 and 8 shouldn't have been full, 10 episode seasons.

[MediumHigh]

The issue isn't that they were executed. That made sense in context and was a dumb ass thing for the Tarlies to force. The issue was she burnt them alive which is explicitly a reference to her insane father.

Tomato, Potato. Do you want her to execute them with a greatsword? She isn't it Ned Stark.

She has soldiers to do the executing if needed. Jorah would've lopped their heads off no problem. By choosing to burn them to death she is explicitly making people wonder if she is following in her father's footsteps. It was a dumb decision, a cruel decision and a not so subtle sign that she may be going mad in the context of the history of her family.

She has dragons. The only reason she is even a player at this stage is having dragons. Her burning people with said dragons doesn't make her mad. It makes her a targaryen, which is literally her only real claim to the throne. In universe there is no reason why this is cruel or dumb. She is a Targaryen.

Season 7 and 8 aren't rushed. Their badly written. They've been badly written since Season 5. This is several years of bad writing coming to fruition. If you know you have to abridge a series (and they've known for years) there are ways to make accommodations for that without shitting on the pacing. They did not. Either they waited and hoped that GRRM will ride in on a dragon and finish the Winds of Winter OR they had full confidence in their ability to ad-lib the series. In either case, whether by procrastination or serious over-estimating their abilities we have Game of Why-Did-You-Do-That.

[eldaec]

Which I still don't excuse. There's no reason Seasons 7 and 8 shouldn't have been full, 10 episode seasons.

The episodes have generally been longer in season 7 and 8. I haven't checked but doubt they are that much shorter in minutes.

Anyway, length hasn't been the problem.

[Samwise]

Anyway, length hasn't been the problem.

 

[Cyrrex]

I am not one to nitpick stuff and am not going to do that now either....and I tend to give this show a pass for its clumsiness as of late....

But that whole episode was bullshit.  Every other scene had me cringing or rolling my eyes.  Jesus Christ. 

I will watch the last two episodes just for the visual spectacle.  No specific ending actually makes sense any more.

[Jeff Kelly]

From what I understand, it's not a budget issue - HBO will throw money at this shit all day long - but a lot of the core actors have other commitments now and they want to wrap this up and get on with things. I heard that basically two short seasons with a year gap between them was the only way to get everyone on board to finish the series.

HBO is not throwing infinite money on the show though and going by past seasons the show runners always had budget issues. Blackwater (S2E9) ran 2 million dollars over budget, very barely didn't get made at all if it weren't for HBO giving them the additional 2 million and which could have severely ham-strung the rest of the season if it hadn't been the penultimate episode.

S8E3 was 55 production-days of night shoots which will probably make it the most expensive GoT episode ever.

Pacing is almost always turning into a budget issue and vice versa because if you have a significant cost overrun early in a season it affects all later episodes and if your plot doesn't match your budget per episode you can't tell the story the way you want to. There's a reason why traditional 22 - 25 episode seasons had clip shows and "bottle" episodes and it's usually budget issues. They allegedly have a 90 million dollar budget for season 8 and could have reasonably gone for a 10 episode season. Season 2 allegedly had a budget of about 6 million per episode and did 10 episodes. The fact that they did 6 - even if some of them are longer - probably means that they had to spend so much on VFX and production (night shoots are very expensive) that they couldn't do 10.

My question would be if the episode count was a deliberate decision or if it simply happened to be 6 because they blew through their alotted budget early on. My guess would be that it wasn't deliberate because it usually isn't. What usually happens is that the show runners have a severe budget ovrrun early on and then either ham-string the entire rest of the season if it's a series with a fixed episode order (which gives you "character focus" episodes, clip shows and bottle episodes to compensate) or the season is shortened to compensate giving you less time to tell your story.

In addition GoT cannot simply move the rest of the plot into a season 9 because there won't be one. HBO is not planning on extending the series to another season anyway and even if they would consider it they couldn't because all of the contracts with the cast expire at the end of season 8 and so every single contract would have to be re-negotiated. This would lead to a significant increase in salaries for the main cast and in all likelihood they couldn't even get everybody back again for a season 9.

[Jeff Kelly]

If you make shit up as you go along the issues get more severe of course. You're less likely to fuck up your budget if you have things planned out in advance and have a resonable idea about how much of your budget you need to spend on each episode going by the plot.

In the case of GoT the show runners had the luxury to know that they'll 100% get a season 7 and 8 and a rough idea about the budget per season so they likely could have plotted out two entire seasons worth of story in advance. Which could have been 20 episodes worth of plot if they handled their budget well. It seems like they didn't though.

[Cyrrex]

Let's be clear about something, though, as pertains to budgets.  They can go over budget and/or generally be restrained by budgets and that excuse only gets you so far.  HBO is making giant piles of cash on this show, probably several orders of magnitude beyond their budget expenses for the show.  So while it may be true that their are constraints from the producers' POV, that doesn't make it an excuse.  HBO could easily throw more money at it and still make a fortune.  They can get away with not doing so simply because, at this point, they know everyone is going to watch through to the end.

And to be fair, even if we wanted to make these kinds of complaints....it is still the most impressive television show ever created from a sheer production point-of-view.  The battle scenes have generally been outstanding.  I think Battle of the Bastards is the most impressive battle scene ever put to film.

[Teleku]

I'm pretty sure that when they announced Season 8 over 2 years ago, they had said back then it was only going to be 6 episodes.  I'm having a hard time with google, but I remember people being pissed over this.  So doubt it was them "blowing their budget early".

[Cyrrex]

That sounds right, I think we have known this for a while.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm not excusing anything, quite the opposite. They had a 100% committment from HBO that they would get a Season 6, 7 and 8 and they had a rough estimate how much money they could spend per season and how much more money HBO was willing to dump on the show in addition to that. That's a luxury that a TV production usually does not have. In normal TV it's quite common that the show runners don't even know the number of episodes ordered before they start production and contracts are awarded on a per season basis.

The GoT show runners could have planned out up to 30 episodes worth of plot in advance with a rough estimate of how much money they could spend on each episode and a "buffer" going by how much HBO was willing to spend on top of that. A competent showrunner team can do that well enough so that the story doesn't feel "rushed" at the end and so that no huge plot holes are left. A competent team even has contingecies for budget and production time overruns like bottle-episodes or other means to insert an episode with a limited budget.

There's no excuse to rush the end of the series and to open up the amount of plot holes that they did and there's also no excuse for weird characterisations and motivations.

It's not rocket science. If someone like J. Michael Straczynski can plot out a working 4 season story arc for Babylon 5 with the limited budget he had to work with then they can as well. TV with story arcs is nothing new and traditional TV usually screws that up because they don't know in advance how many episodes or seasons they have to tell their story.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm pretty sure that when they announced Season 8 over 2 years ago, they had said back then it was only going to be 6 episodes.  I'm having a hard time with google, but I remember people being pissed over this.  So doubt it was them "blowing their budget early".

It certainly doesn't feel like they knew in advance. If they knew it makes it even worse.

[Teleku]

Ok, looked it up.  From this article:

Game of Thrones’ eighth season will run for six episodes and may feature longer episodes
At the conclusion of Game of Thrones’ sixth season in 2016, showrunners Benioff and Weiss said that they were planning to end the show after another 13 episodes that would be split between two final seasons.

Season seven ran for seven episodes — so simple arithmetic suggested that season eight will be six episodes long. In January 2018, HBO confirmed that it will indeed contain six episodes.

It’s easy to wonder how the show could possibly wrap up all of its existing storylines in just six episodes, without speeding up its storytelling and ignoring the concept of time more than it already has.

So, they technically didn't confirm the 6 episodes until January 2018, but back in 2016 they said there would only be 13 more episodes, and that's exactly what they did (and everybody just took that as the truth, thus all the bitching).

So yeah, what you are seeing here is literally the best the writers could do knowing years ahead of time.

[Riggswolfe]

The issue isn't that they were executed. That made sense in context and was a dumb ass thing for the Tarlies to force. The issue was she burnt them alive which is explicitly a reference to her insane father.

Tomato, Potato. Do you want her to execute them with a greatsword? She isn't it Ned Stark.

She has soldiers to do the executing if needed. Jorah would've lopped their heads off no problem. By choosing to burn them to death she is explicitly making people wonder if she is following in her father's footsteps. It was a dumb decision, a cruel decision and a not so subtle sign that she may be going mad in the context of the history of her family.

She has dragons. The only reason she is even a player at this stage is having dragons. Her burning people with said dragons doesn't make her mad. It makes her a targaryen, which is literally her only real claim to the throne. In universe there is no reason why this is cruel or dumb. She is a Targaryen.

Season 7 and 8 aren't rushed. Their badly written. They've been badly written since Season 5. This is several years of bad writing coming to fruition. If you know you have to abridge a series (and they've known for years) there are ways to make accommodations for that without shitting on the pacing. They did not. Either they waited and hoped that GRRM will ride in on a dragon and finish the Winds of Winter OR they had full confidence in their ability to ad-lib the series. In either case, whether by procrastination or serious over-estimating their abilities we have Game of Why-Did-You-Do-That.

Dragons are WMDs. She'd be dumb not to use them in battle as they give her a significant edge. Using them to execute people is both cruel and dumb. It directly draws a line from her to her father whose claim to fame is what? Being an insane Targaryen who burned people to death. This isn't hard to figure out. It's barely even subtext. If you can't figure it out you're simply not paying attention.

[Jeff Kelly]

So if Targaryen == mad then why exactly is Jon Snow the better choice?

[Chimpy]

So if Targaryen == mad then why exactly is Jon Snow the better choice?

He’s only half a Targ instead of an incest baby?

[MediumHigh]

The issue isn't that they were executed. That made sense in context and was a dumb ass thing for the Tarlies to force. The issue was she burnt them alive which is explicitly a reference to her insane father.

Tomato, Potato. Do you want her to execute them with a greatsword? She isn't it Ned Stark.

She has soldiers to do the executing if needed. Jorah would've lopped their heads off no problem. By choosing to burn them to death she is explicitly making people wonder if she is following in her father's footsteps. It was a dumb decision, a cruel decision and a not so subtle sign that she may be going mad in the context of the history of her family.

She has dragons. The only reason she is even a player at this stage is having dragons. Her burning people with said dragons doesn't make her mad. It makes her a targaryen, which is literally her only real claim to the throne. In universe there is no reason why this is cruel or dumb. She is a Targaryen.

Season 7 and 8 aren't rushed. Their badly written. They've been badly written since Season 5. This is several years of bad writing coming to fruition. If you know you have to abridge a series (and they've known for years) there are ways to make accommodations for that without shitting on the pacing. They did not. Either they waited and hoped that GRRM will ride in on a dragon and finish the Winds of Winter OR they had full confidence in their ability to ad-lib the series. In either case, whether by procrastination or serious over-estimating their abilities we have Game of Why-Did-You-Do-That.

Dragons are WMDs. She'd be dumb not to use them in battle as they give her a significant edge. Using them to execute people is both cruel and dumb. It directly draws a line from her to her father whose claim to fame is what? Being an insane Targaryen who burned people to death. This isn't hard to figure out. It's barely even subtext. If you can't figure it out you're simply not paying attention.

What made Dany's father the Mad King wasn't the fact that he killed peopled or burned them alive. Its why he did. Its the context. He didn't just burn his enemies, he picked people arbitrarily to kill in his court because of rumors and baseless suspicions. He drove a wedge between him and his own hand, and used cruelty at the slightest provocation. He was insane, fire is just a tool one of many toola he employed at the slightest discomfort.

Dany uses fire to win wars. her promise to execute them if they didnt bend the knee is not uncommon or even particularly cruel by Westeros standards. Dany never did anything out of cruelty or malice. There is a world of difference between Dany and her father.

[Tebonas]

Aerys was a peaceful and benevolent king when he was younger as well. And when people are searching for signs of that madness creeping into her rule, it doesn't mean shit what she intended.

Madness is the curse of the Targaryens, many of them went mad for generations. And people know that. Robert Baratheon mentioned it in the series as long ago as Season 1. Master Aemons brother, for example, drank Wildfire to turn himself into a dragon (also mentioned in the series).

[Jeff Kelly]

So again, Jon Snow? If the whole blood line is cursed then why does Snow being a Targaryen make any sense? At least he's only half cursed and therefore half mad?

[Teleku]

It's not.  Again, this whole madness thing is so forced.  Tebonas already hit the things I was saying earlier in Discord.  He wasn't the mad king because he burned people, he was the mad king because he went ultra paranoid and started unjustly executing all sorts of people, and then eventually High Lords, which of course lead to mass rebellion.  Also, so afraid of knives he didn't let his nails or hair be cut so he had foot long finger nails and long rats nest hair that made him look like an ultra hobo.

If he had been a just and good king who took legitimate criminals/traitors out and had them burned alive, people would say he was eccentric, but not mad, and loved him.  The fire thing was just a light flourish to the things people actually considered him insane for.

[Riggswolfe]

The issue isn't that they were executed. That made sense in context and was a dumb ass thing for the Tarlies to force. The issue was she burnt them alive which is explicitly a reference to her insane father.

Tomato, Potato. Do you want her to execute them with a greatsword? She isn't it Ned Stark.

She has soldiers to do the executing if needed. Jorah would've lopped their heads off no problem. By choosing to burn them to death she is explicitly making people wonder if she is following in her father's footsteps. It was a dumb decision, a cruel decision and a not so subtle sign that she may be going mad in the context of the history of her family.

She has dragons. The only reason she is even a player at this stage is having dragons. Her burning people with said dragons doesn't make her mad. It makes her a targaryen, which is literally her only real claim to the throne. In universe there is no reason why this is cruel or dumb. She is a Targaryen.

Season 7 and 8 aren't rushed. Their badly written. They've been badly written since Season 5. This is several years of bad writing coming to fruition. If you know you have to abridge a series (and they've known for years) there are ways to make accommodations for that without shitting on the pacing. They did not. Either they waited and hoped that GRRM will ride in on a dragon and finish the Winds of Winter OR they had full confidence in their ability to ad-lib the series. In either case, whether by procrastination or serious over-estimating their abilities we have Game of Why-Did-You-Do-That.

Dragons are WMDs. She'd be dumb not to use them in battle as they give her a significant edge. Using them to execute people is both cruel and dumb. It directly draws a line from her to her father whose claim to fame is what? Being an insane Targaryen who burned people to death. This isn't hard to figure out. It's barely even subtext. If you can't figure it out you're simply not paying attention.

What made Dany's father the Mad King wasn't the fact that he killed peopled or burned them alive. Its why he did. Its the context. He didn't just burn his enemies, he picked people arbitrarily to kill in his court because of rumors and baseless suspicions. He drove a wedge between him and his own hand, and used cruelty at the slightest provocation. He was insane, fire is just a tool one of many toola he employed at the slightest discomfort.

Dany uses fire to win wars. her promise to execute them if they didnt bend the knee is not uncommon or even particularly cruel by Westeros standards. Dany never did anything out of cruelty or malice. There is a world of difference between Dany and her father.

You're either not paying attention or being intentionally thick. Executing them by beheading and burning them alive is much, much different. One is a quick, merciful death. The other is a cruel, painful death. It's not hard to see at all. There's a reason people get shot when they're executed and not burned with a flamethrower. The show consistently equates burning people alive with characters who are, at best, morally gray and at worst utterly insane. Even if Dany's intentions weren't cruel or malicious, there are lots of people who remember her father and if you think those actions don't make them go "wait, is she another Arys?" then you're lying to yourself.

She had lots of choices in that scene. She could have had them beheaded, she could have forced them to take the black, etc etc. Instead she burnt them alive. This was a warning sign to characters like Varys and to the viewers. I immediately went "oh shit, is she going to become the mad queen?" because I picked up on the not at all subtle subtext. As did many, many viewers I assure you.

[Jeff Kelly]

Isn't it like arguing which inmate of Arkham Asylum is the most mad, though?