HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

the sort of fans who've spent the past few years posting about DRAGONS on their Facebook pages, she has DRAGONS and DRAGONS are cool it's the DRAGONS show

lol otm

agreed the "shock" over Dany is weird they've been telegraphing for a long time

highlight for me that seems to have gotten lost, found the Jaime/Tyrion scene very affecting...."You were all I had..." really got me

I spoke too soon

honestly, fuck the kings landing people except the children, they were horrible, ignorant people and were never loyal to anyone, the moment they got the chance to punish a vulnerable person, they attacked with horrible cruelty.
thank you #DaenerysTargaryen
#GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/riPocEKZC5

— leila ‎⎊ loves tony stark 3000 (@wisestark) May 13, 2019

There are... lots of tweets like these

highlight for me that seems to have gotten lost, found the Jaime/Tyrion scene very affecting...."You were all I had..." really got me

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, May 13, 2019 8:57 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i liked the scene a lot, but it was undermined a bit by the set up--davos magically becoming the world's most stealthy dry-land smuggler to get jaime out of the battlements.

but yeah, that was a great conclusion to their relationship

Huh, I thought it was just Davos arranging for the boat to be waiting for Jamie, but that was another rushed thing last night.

I honestly thought Tyrion was going to ask Davos to sneak into the city and ring the bells before battle even started, but alas.

Fuck a CleganeBowl, it was totally unnecessary and IMO reverses seven whole seasons of Sandor learning that he didn't have to be a slave to revenge, that he could have an entire life and put it all entirely behind him. The Dany stuff makes sense in a crude way even if it feels too rushed given the circumstances, but the Sandor thing really has the taste of "It's in the script."

i thought davos was involved with getting jaime out of prison--tyrion unlocked his chains, but his escape had to have been more involved than just walking out the back flap of the prison tent? i mean, i guess it wasn't because they didn't return to it.

i will say, i don't love the everlasting true love conclusion to jaime and cersei's arc cause it seems bit less like an arc and more of a u-turn for jaime, but i guess there wasn't really another way their arc could've ended.

xp

That makes sense! It was just another one of those rushed beats from the season.

xp especially in light of whatever season it was where Jamie gave his big speech about killing the Mad King because, at the end, he gave the order to burn the whole city and so he killed him instead. Now, the whole city might burn if there's a war? Meh. Sister-fuckers gonna sister-fuck.

I am disappointed with Jamie's character conclusion overall, but I think whatever motivations Jamie had in finding Cersei dramatically changed when the entire city started burning and crumbling

I thought so many of the crowd scenes and battle scenes were spectacularly done

Of all the shows, if they don't explicitly show them dying (and sometimes even when they do - Jon), they probably aren't dead. I don't think Cersei and Jamie are gone.

I would have liked if they somehow storyboarded it so that Jaime kills Cersei to save innocent lives from the threat of war at the doorstep and then has to watch in horror as, right afterwards, Dany pointlessly kills everyone anyway in a tragic whoops-wrong-mad-queen sort of moment.

Then he could have Tommened himself afterwards

Lots of excellent stuff in the NYT recap

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/arts/television/game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-5-bells.html

dany to tyrion: i have psychic powers now and i know exactly what happened in 3 private conversations. betray me again and it will be the last time.
2 scenes later: tyrion betrays dany
dany doesn't find out

Other than all the ones wiped out at the start, did we see any Dothraki fighting at the battle of Winterfell back in episode 3?

Because she seemed to have found a load more for last night's battle.

They said last week that they'd lost half of the dothrakis iirc, but it doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense.

I thought so many of the crowd scenes and battle scenes were spectacularly done

― twink infinitives (flamboyant goon tie included), Monday, May 13, 2019 9:19 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah they did a good job of making us feel the terror of the civilians, a terror i felt much more viscerally than anything during the zombie battle

also, so much for that vaunted golden company, eh?

golden roasted, maybe

i thought all the bell ringing talk was setting up that jaimie betrays tyrion by telling cersei about the bells idea, cersei rings them, lures the attackers into a compromised position and then ambushes them. but no it turns out they kept repeating the bells means surrender thing in case the dumb audience didn't understand the first time.

I thought so many of the crowd scenes and battle scenes were spectacularly done

They were well-executed but kinda generic to me? the umpteenth iteration of relentless post-9/11 city-smashing a la Man of Steel, War of the Worlds etc.

i understand (kinda) the thematic reasons behind the constant cutting from cleganebowl to arya's escape, but it made it hard to figure out wtf was happening on the screen.

you could almost feel the editors patting themselves on the back with those "clever" cuts back and forth between those scenes

those dual-climax cuts were what reminded me that D&D are doing a Star War

And that conversation Varys had with the girl at the beginning: they were trying to poison Dany right?

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Monday, May 13, 2019 6:50 AM (two hours ago)

I understood it as the girl was just spying on Dany ... like Varys' former position at the palace was spymaster and kids were often used as spies.

yeah i assumed that too

Yeah
It was just something about them saying she’s not eating or drinking anything
We’ll try again at dinner

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27453212/varys-daenerys-poison-plan-game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-5/

oh yeah doh

zombie battle was cool but this was definitely better. the episode would have been more weighty without rushing to this conclusion, and how are they going to wrap it up in 80 minutes? idk. i think Daenerys turning villain is absolutely ill, for the record. i think the episode as a standalone piece of work is spectacularly done and fairly brave in terms of taking a heroic character we've followed for eight seasons, one positioned as the opposite of everything the Lannisters represented, and making her ultimately considerably worse.

all of the post-GRRM choices are so uninspired. all this show has left is "you-are-there" action setpieces. what a bummer.

is there any money on whether Arya takes out the new queen

― mh, Monday, May 13, 2019 12:00 AM (twelve hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It would be lame to have Arya kill Dany so soon after the Night King, and thematically off, as the horrors she saw were the results of vengeance. But they've done dumb things before, so who knows.

xp - idk if she's "considerably worse" - like we see all the soldiers continue to fight, and attack civilians, etc. It isn't just Dany that is being destructive. The Lannisters kept fighting and killing and taking over other parts of the country even after they had safely captured the seat of power. Maybe I am just also thinking of the parts of the books that show all the fighting and pillaging and destruction in the Riverlands and the "ride over country" ... like this is what "humanity" is when given the opportunity. You could argue that Dany sucks in that she is not compelling the people to become their "best selves," which I don't disagree with, but to say that she is worse than who she is replacing? I feel like we're forgetting what they did.

she just razed a city that was surrendering, just on scale alone it's the most bloodthirsty thing that any character has done in this show. her troops were ready to accept the surrender of their opponents but when she just started burning the place willy nilly they took it as a sign that they had free-reign.

i don't think the city was officially surrendering! Like generally when one surrenders, the leader officially surrenders. Considering all the devious shit Cersei has done, I wouldn't have believed that surrender until either she stepped out of that castle with her hands raised, or my troops had entered her castle and verified that she had left the city, therefore surrendering in absentia.

i'm not forgetting the lannister army being as brutal as they were especially in the first couple of seasons, but i think this particular act of massacring a city of a million people kind of takes it up another level.

i think the bells thing was clearly the indication that they were surrendering. Not sure if we're supposed to think Cersei gave the order to do so, but I sense that she did??

i don't think cersei gave the order, but the city was surrendering

Soldiers have been known to surrender without the consent of their king/queen

dany as master tactician making cold but most correct move theories are undercut a bit by D&D saying she basically saw the red keep and decided in that moment to burn everything in a tantrum.

I think the weakness of the episode is obviously the character arc of Daenerys leading up to this moment. the seeds were planted for her to lose her mind but i don't think the descent into madness was as believable as it could have been. it doesn't take away from the episode overall mostly owning, however. i think Emilia Clarke is completely good at playing insane, also she wore a cool "i've gone mad now" war outfit.

The Lannisters rounded up small children that were fathered (or potentially fathered) by Robert and had them executed. Their army sacked and destroyed probably almost 1/2 of the country. Joffrey was a fucking sadist. Cersei subjected her enemies to slow painful torture (i.e. Ellaria Sand).

dany as master tactician making cold but most correct move theories are undercut a bit by D&D saying she basically saw the red keep and decided in that moment to burn everything in a tantrum.

― i got bag sauce in my bag (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, May 13, 2019 10:20 AM (three minutes ago)

ugh, thanks for ruining this show again, showrunner dudes

I thought that was clear in the scene where Jon and Grey Worm are facing the army and they start dropping their swords of their own accord. The bells and gates thing wasn't a special signal for this particular battle, but a general signal of surrender that the army at King's Landing would know. So Cersei's up in the keep going on about how her army will win, and they're out there in the streets giving up. The general mood of the army goes back to the scene where Arya clearly announces who she is and her intentions and they don't stop her and Sandor from entering the city.

I'm sure Cersei had her own guard, and the Red Keep's gates may not have been open, but the city at large had surrendered. Let's not have any illusions: Danerys would have probably torched Cersei even if she walked out of the keep with her hands over her head.

I can't think of any position Danerys has taken that hasn't been directly informed by her own personal experience or a need for an army/resources/acceptance. I think that's the Varys/Tyrion dichotomy: Tyrion saw the good acts she'd done and hoped he could mold her into a person who did those things with just motivations, where Varys concentrated on her motivations and had no faith she'd act justly because her actions were based on expedience and not an ethos.

We kind of figured out who was right

I don't know how to explain to you that "Will I be a good queen or a bad queen?" instantly switching to "I'm actually Super-Hitler, the Hitler who can fly" is not good writing#GamesOfThrones

— MEGATRON (@SJWMEGATRON) May 13, 2019

wasn't Dany's (weak ass) explanation for annihilating king's landing was she had to kill a shitload of people to liberate future generations for good?

fwiw I don't think that what I said was very well set up by the plot over the seasons and her portrayal has been broadly sympathetic, even with the number of moments where she's told (often by Jorah) how she should act and it seems like she grumpily accepts it. Maybe if he made it and was there on the roof when she parked the dragon for a moment, we'd have gotten a happier ending.

Still waiting for a GoT battle scene that doesn't have Jon Snow staring helplessly into space for five minutes.

I don't know how the show is going to justify his inevitable ascent to the throne - has he done anything remotely useful in the past season and a half? couldn't win the Battle of the Bastards without Sansa, couldn't win the Battle of Winterfell without Arya, didn't kill the Night King, didn't kill Cersei, and was completely wrong about Dany. He's the ultimate personification of the mediocre white man failing upwards.

i think the fans did a great job of creating a mad queen narrative around dany through close-reading (or close-watching, whatever) and theorizing. most of that arc was happening behind-the-scenes or in the minds of watchers, not really in-text.