Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[Shannow]

Look this last 13 episodes definitely deserves to be critisized, it just seems a bit over the top that's all.

On the issue of Bran being a dumb choice, yeah possibly, but they all would've been dumb choices / way to obvious ones. Jon? Come on, jeezus biggest fantasy trope of all time. Sansa? Maybe but too predictable and she really wanted to stay in the North. Bran the Broken does kind of work. It's the setup that's the problem. I sometimes wonder if GRRM did tell them he would be king or if they had to make it up it was so rushed.

You could adjust like 4-5 scenes in these last 13 episodes and it would've been a lot better off.

1. Stupid trip north of the wall, change that...still have dragon eat an ice spear though.
2. Don't have the Dothraki charge off for no reason at the start of the Night battle, less endless fighting off zombies for characters with plot armor
3. Kill the 2nd to last dragon at Kings landing, maybe with a dying Lannister soldier firing off the last scorpion as the city surrenders. THAT triggers Dany. (fucking bells, jeezus)

That's 3 at least. Just changing those cpl of key plot devices I think would alter the whole outlook of the last 13 episodes.

Oh yeah and Jon being a Targaeyrn was almost completely pointless. The Kingsmoot should've been longer, bigger and bloodier.

[Riggswolfe]

I've read the books. Warging is barely explained in them at all, and what we know is pretty sparse. In addition, we don't really get the warging vibe from Dany and the dragons. It's always treated as more of a "mother of dragons" thing. I don't ever remember the Targaryens being called wargs.

You need to re-read the books.  Warging and everything about it is explained at great depth, particularly in the latest book (as a matter of fact, its almost assured that Johns mind will go into a wolf after he dies, and will be there until he rezz'ed somehow).  What Riggswolfe says is hypothetically possible if you include the book stuff, and would be a great way to read that scene.  But since they never explained all that, and much of the book stuff I bring up that tears apart the show narrative is discounted because its not show canon, I'm going to have to take that as non-canon.  It's a nice thought, but I honestly think the writers were just like "And Drogon decides to teach Jon Snow that the lust for power was the real enemy all along, before picking up his mum and flying her off to a hill to bury her with some flower somewhere."

Yeah, from the show perspective it's not detailed at all and warging is pretty much dropped around Season 6 or so other than Bran occasionally doing it. If I was the writers, I'd have had Jon standing in front of the throne and Drogon melts it while trying to kill him, only for his Targaryen blood to save him then Drogon picks her up and flies away like "eh fuck it, I tried." It's not a lot better but it makes more sense from a TV perspective than what we saw.

I'd also have changed Episode 3. I'd have had Jon get stopped by the White Walkers, not Vieserion. He is swarmed by them, maybe kills a couple which drops some wights and helps explain why people like Sam survived. During his struggle, Arya runs past then have the rest of the scene play out as it did. This would make it easier for people to swallow her getting to the Night King. I wasn't terribly bothered by it but I know a lot of people were hung up on it. But I think the showrunners valued a moment of surprise over narrative in that moment.

[HaemishM]

You could adjust like 4-5 scenes in these last 13 episodes and it would've been a lot better off.

That's kind of my point, isn't it? There are a ton of really little changes that could have been made along the way (both additions and subtractions) that would have smoothed a lot of the rough edges out, and given context and depth to some of the choices. Bran being a useless cripple throughout the battle was one of those. I seriously cannot remember one conversation on screen that he had since returning where he HELPED the situation. His most significant contribution was confirming that Jon was a Targareyn to Sam and telling Sansa and Arya. And since Jon being a Targareyn had almost no impact other than driving a wedge between him and Dany, what even was the point? Even that wedge, which should have had a great impact didn't because it didn't have any time to breathe.

The first 5 seasons were the result of a metric fuckton of words being written to explain things. The last 3 seasons were literally trying to tie up all those loose ends in less than half the words, likely from an outline written on a post-it note smeared with jam and ham juice.

[Spiff]

I think you can also take into account these were pretty much the 13 most expensive episodes of television ever made and that's the best they could do?
Criticism deserves to be a bit harsher if you piss away that much money and hype tbh.

They should have just added in a post credit montage of Bran '3-eyed-ravening' back to the past to set it all up à-la deadpool 2 (he basically already used it to time travel when he hodor'ed Hodor) and it worked for the Avengers dammit!
Last shot: Bran sitting on his new iron throne-chair, little smirk on his face, glass of wine in hand 

[schild]

nothing would've made bran cool

dude sucks and any attempt to make him cool would've been even more groanworthy than what we got

[Samwise]

This sort of thing really feeds into my general sense that they were doing this entire season by the seat of their pants and the writer of any given episode didn't know what was going to happen in the next episode.  It wouldn't have been hard at all for Bran to say something a little more vague like "I have a much larger purpose now" which wouldn't give the whole game away but would set him up for a more satisfying payoff later.

[eldaec]

That was, like most of s8, far better than I expected.

Obviously seemed massively abridged, but better for it. Felt they just went and filmed GRRMs notes. Lack of almost any dialog that didn't involve a Dinklage helped.

[Tale]

Bran being king - WTF? Why? There was nothing the character had done that earned that.

There's a theory that it's a coup by the trees.

Bran can not only see everything, he can change history (as made clear in the Hodor backstory). So the Mad King goes mad yelling "burn them all" = Bran. Jon being "exactly where he needs to be" at all times = Bran. Dany going mad = Bran. All the weird decisions and shit that makes no sense but leads to this result = Bran.

Bran is an instrument of the combined consciousness of the weirwood trees. This may be a god, or nature itself, or just the trees. But it has seized power. That's the theory.

[HaemishM]

That is some SERIOUS reading of the tea leaves there. Also fucking terrible.

[Teleku]

That's a better take than what we got.  

Also, again, I just want to emphasize how frighting him becoming king is.  He can see what everybody in his kingdom is doing at all times.  It's all powerful big brother.  On top of that, he can warg into anybody he wants at will, basically turning him into an Agent from the Matrix.  Can just directly take control of who ever to interfere in the affairs of everybody in the kingdom, killing them at a whim to mold the flow of events to go where he see's fit.  And again, if they make him a nice new throne out of live Weirwood tree's, can basically becoming an undying corpse lord ruling with this iron grip forever.


Asshole should have brought Meera down to be his fake queen though!  (I wanted more points for my fantasy team)

[Rendakor]

Thing is, he can do all of that without being King; at least this way, the world knows he's in charge.

As I said in Discord, I suspect that the TV series ending might give GRRM the push he needs to finish at least one more book. "Look how much better the books are than the end of the show was!" is a pretty good sales pitch.

[Teleku]

Well it's one thing to be able to do that, but there is only so much he can do by himself.  It's another to have the entire apparatus of state and government at your command, doing your will, but then you have this power to keep yourself from being over thrown and always knowing exactly what every lord.  He can have his armies/police do what ever he desires, and protect them with his god powers for eternity.  This is how you get Sauron people!  All he needs to do is build a giant tower on the ruins of Kings Landing to sit on top of.

Also:



Also Also:  They can rename Winterfell 'Kings Landing' now.

[Riggswolfe]

So Teleku, you're saying GOT is nothing more than a prequel for this?

[HaemishM]

You guys have already put more thought into King Bran than I guarantee anyone working on the show did.

[Teleku]

Yes, that's actually what I've been saying.  Basically a slightly less vegetative Emperor.

I guess they've been foreshadowing this for a long time actually:

[Setanta]

I was really hoping that the 7 kingdoms would splinter into civil war.

There was too much happily ever after in Bran the Boring being the king.

I wouldn't be surprised if Martin had the idea of a new or cyclical Bran the Builder - something that could be achieved by the 3 eyed raven. Then again, I wanted more from the 3ER and the others beyond the wall.

[Cyrrex]

Jaime will kill Cersei.  It is simultaneously the worst thing that could happen to her, the best thing he could do AND it would make him the motherfucking QUEENSLAYER.  And Arya is going to wreck the Mountain, probably heroically saving the Hound in the process, because that would be fucking awesome and also close that circle in a satisfactory way.

Nobody will sit on the Iron Throne.  Either Jon or Dany (depending on which of them lives) will stand in front of it with Drogon, and while appearing to contemplate taking a seat, will instead utter a quiet "Dracarys" instead, and Drogon will melt it into slag.  Roll credits.

My predictions way back.  I actually thought Jaime was going to kill Cersei, right up until he didn't (even if it was to put her out of her misery or something).  I also thought Arya might swoop in and kill the Mountain.

I got fairly close with the Iron Throne prediction.

[Abagadro]

I think people are reading the purpose of the coronation of Bran the Wheelie Wheelie Legs No Feelie wrong. It wasn't because he should be king or would be a good king. It was so they would have a king that was so checked out that no one could really get mad at him and want to overthrow the monarchy.  The realm would be run by the small council.   It was the triumph of Weberian bureaucracy.

[Cyrrex]

That's how I saw it as well.  A choice nobody would be unhappy about nor be able to take advantage of.  Worked fine for me.  Most of that episode I thought was pretty well done, even if I have complaints about what led up to it.

They could totally make a Arya Goes West spinoff.

[Tale]

More on Bran/Three Eyed Raven potentially having pulled the strings. Perhaps he led a Groundhog Day/Russian Doll life, changing each piece of the past until it arrived here. He left a trail of discarded victims: Hodor, Meera, Benjen, Theon and his men, everyone else who died vs the Night King, everyone who died because Bran outed Jon, and then Jon himself. Serial mistake-maker Tyrion was always exactly where he needed to be to make another mistake, leading to the serial mistake-maker coming up with "Bran should be king". Is Bran a time lord Littlefinger?

Bran to Jaime: "You wouldn’t be able to help us in this fight if I let them murder you first."
Bran to Jon: "You were exactly where you were supposed to be."

Article: I am a Bran truther.
Article: Did Bran Stark know he would be king?

I haven't got it all figured out. (Another theory: Is Bran an extension of the Night King? "His mark is on me.")

[Comstar]

Bran is king. He has no army, no watch, no city, no peasants, no fleet, no money, no family around, no dragon, NO LEADERSHIP (beyond controlling 1 person at a time), no food, no roof, no allies and 2 leaderless armies with no home sitting on his front lawn?

[Tebonas]

The two armies are gone, both the Dohtraki and the Unsullied board ships when Jon is brought to the north. The Unsullied go to Naath, and the Dothraki probably back home.

The rest you said is true, though. Thats why I think Bran will be king exactly as long as it suits the High Lords. Which might be quite some time given the desolate state everybody is in right now.

[Cyrrex]

Maybe some of you book nerds know the answer, but are we sure Bran can simply inhabit whomever he wants?  Haven't we only seen animals and a halfwitted Hodor?

[eldaec]

The warg 'target' can fight back, but there is no hard limit to what can be warged into. Also the only two first hand examples we have sent the victim insane (Hodor and Thistle). On top of that the 'skinchangers' north of the wall have a code specifically forbidding warging to humans (also no eating people and no fucking).

My reading is that warging into humans is possible, but risky and hard.

Bram definitely can't just inhabit anyone on a whim. As the whole Hodor incident shows.

[calapine]

Haven't seen last episode, so just some drive by meme:

[MahrinSkel]

"Shadows on the wall."

At the end, the Night King dies like a mook, shanked by a little girl after having weakened the last Dragonlord *just* enough. Pretty much every known follower of the Red God in Westeros is dead. The Sept of the Seven is destroyed, and the remainder of the Sparrows are nowhere to be seen. And the Three Eyed Raven, avatar of the Old Gods, is now King Bran the Broken, Lord of the 6 Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.

If I were playing a game with the world as a board, where the Doom of Valyria was a recent event, I'd think the trees just pulled off one hell of a hat trick.

Good game, what's next?

--Dave

[Speedy Cerviche]

They should hope Bran can turn into an immortal tree-god-emperor because otherwise an elective monarchy is a guarantee for civil wars within one or two succession events.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm not about to say that I'm some great writer or anything, but I literally cannot imagine starting a story without knowing where it's going to end (whether that ending will suck or not is a whole other thing). There's plenty of room in the middle of the story for improvisation and altering the course - one of my new books had a pretty significant character shift that I didn't even figure out until the chapter before it happened. Hell, I just finished a six-novella work that's around 180,000 words and I knew from the day I started writing it how the whole thing would end. It was the whole goddamn point of writing the books.

I'm not saying there can't be good work if you don't know the ending before you start, just that I cannot fathom how that would make for a good writing process.

Late answer.

GRR always described his own writing process as being a "gardener" as compared to an "architect". He described it as a process similar to that of a gardener where he needs to prepare the soil, sow out the seeds and watch his characters grow until he knows how they turn out. Which means that he needs to write the characters and their interactions before he can know how they will act and what their motivations are and therefore how the plot progresses. He compared this to writers he called "architects" who know the whole overarching plot before they start writing.

This also means that GRR has no idea how any of the open plot points is going to resolve themselves because he hasn't written them yet.

I've recently learned that apparently a lot of authors operate like gardeners.

There's this urban legend that GRR allegedly had to tell HBO how the books were going to end before HBO was willing to greenlight the series. I don't think that this is actually true. The more I understand GRR's writing process and how he describes it the more I agree with the faction of book fans that claim that GRR has no idea how the series will end or how many books are necessary to get to that end. I mean how could he know if answering this question early is not part of his process?

Understanding this also helped me understand why some long running series just seem to go on and on always opening up more plot threads instead of resolving them and then sort of petering out at the end.

[Brolan]

Bran as king is a terrible choice in the cutthroat GoT political universe. I give it month before some lord decides it's not fair the the Starks both get to be a king AND the North gets to be an independent kingdom. Plus if the North is independant, why not his lands? Also Bran is a weakling anyway and detached from reality and lacking in charisma so THEY would obviously be a better choice for king. The bloody cycle continues.

[Cyrrex]

Counterpoint:  the powerful cutthroats are all dead.

[Teleku]

Bran see's this lord muttering to his friends in real time.  Has him arrested very next day and his head stuck on top of a Weirwood tree (new symbol of Westros, all hail our old god saviors).  Does this a couple more times.  Lords finally figure out thought crime is a deadly crime and learn to truly love Big Bran.  Pretty easy.  There IS no game of thrones while Bran is in command.

[Threash]

I'm not about to say that I'm some great writer or anything, but I literally cannot imagine starting a story without knowing where it's going to end (whether that ending will suck or not is a whole other thing). There's plenty of room in the middle of the story for improvisation and altering the course - one of my new books had a pretty significant character shift that I didn't even figure out until the chapter before it happened. Hell, I just finished a six-novella work that's around 180,000 words and I knew from the day I started writing it how the whole thing would end. It was the whole goddamn point of writing the books.

I'm not saying there can't be good work if you don't know the ending before you start, just that I cannot fathom how that would make for a good writing process.

Late answer.

GRR always described his own writing process as being a "gardener" as compared to an "architect". He described it as a process similar to that of a gardener where he needs to prepare the soil, sow out the seeds and watch his characters grow until he knows how they turn out. Which means that he needs to write the characters and their interactions before he can know how they will act and what their motivations are and therefore how the plot progresses. He compared this to writers he called "architects" who know the whole overarching plot before they start writing.

This also means that GRR has no idea how any of the open plot points is going to resolve themselves because he hasn't written them yet.

I've recently learned that apparently a lot of authors operate like gardeners.

There's this urban legend that GRR allegedly had to tell HBO how the books were going to end before HBO was willing to greenlight the series. I don't think that this is actually true. The more I understand GRR's writing process and how he describes it the more I agree with the faction of book fans that claim that GRR has no idea how the series will end or how many books are necessary to get to that end. I mean how could he know if answering this question early is not part of his process?

Understanding this also helped me understand why some long running series just seem to go on and on always opening up more plot threads instead of resolving them and then sort of petering out at the end.

I think he knows how it will end, just not how to get there. The day after finale there was an interview with Emilia Clarke published and she said in from the early seasons she tried to play her big scenes "heroically" and she always got notes to play it a different way, and she had no idea why until she read the script for the last season. There is no way D & D came up with the Dany heel turn on their own before the show even started, that had to be fed to them by Martin.

[Samwise]

I give it month before some lord decides it's not fair the the Starks both get to be a king AND the North gets to be an independent kingdom. Plus if the North is independant, why not his lands?

This is the part of that whole kingsmoot scene that I (and many people, I'm sure) found to be the most fuckstupid.  Sansa wanting the North to secede made perfect sense; her just straight up demanding it at that moment with no subtlety AND everyone else going along with it without so much as a murmur was not in any way plausible.

[jgsugden]

Now that the Wildling population is nearly eliminated, why would the rest of the 7 Kingdoms give a rats patoottie about the North?  Are they not more likely to be a drain on the other  Kingdoms in the future than a benefit?

I'm imagining Canada asking to annex Alaska on the day the Alaskan Oil and Gas reserves drop to the point where it is efficient to take them anymore... "Would you like Fries with that frozen wasteland?"

[Samwise]

If anything, the North is more valuable now since the end of winter (forever?) means a lot more productive farmland.  Robert went to war against the Iron Islands (which have no known natural resources other than scurvy, and sure as hell aren't manning any walls) to keep them from breaking off, so I have to assume that either all the kingdoms pay enough taxes to be worth keeping around, or it's important to keep even the useless ones around to make sure that the wealthier ones don't get ideas.