The smallest thing in the GOT finale that just drives me crazy!!!! SPOILERS

a reply to: chiefsmom


This was posted yesterday by GRRM.

He always uses the expression, 'How many children did Scarlett O'Hara have?', which is a reference to the various versions of Gone With the Wind. They all end the same but she has a varying amount of children in the different versions, her 'children' being a metaphor for plot or detail changes from his novels to the show.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

My thoughts as a person who's somewhat knowledgeable of the general subject but who is light years behind the folks who live, eat, breathe and sleep this stuff...

One of three things is going to happen:

1) The oft denied rumors that GRRM had a secret deal with HBO ( or D&D ) to refrain from releasing books until after the show ended turns out to be true ( even if none of the parties ever admit to it ) and the last 2 books ( possibly 3 from what I understand, though I might be wrong ) release relatively quickly - and with GRRM coming out of it as something of a genius as he got to litmus test his ideas on other peoples reputations and careers.

2) There is no deal but GRRM still manages to get things finalized before he leaves this mortal coil.

3) Dude Big Macs himself to a bitter death having never finished the story because he'd realized, even before HBO, that his narrative had already gotten too off kilter and he'd written himself into a corner that he had no idea how to write himself out of... Or maybe just from a loss of interest... Or maybe out of spite for the Internet doing what the Internet does at his expense.

IF he chooses to finish the stories I feel like he could salvage things because hundreds or thousands of pages would allow him to stretch out and flesh out the events of the final season of the TV show. Dani going Mad Queen at the end of one episode and dying at the beginning of the next was not satisfying. In a book GRRM could allow her to be Mad Queen for longer than 8 minutes.

OR - another thought I've had... The final book is titled something like "A Dream of Spring" I believe... GRRM could feasibly take one book to cover the events we've seen on the show and then use the final book to paint a far more full picture of what happens after. Decades after. Centuries after... Whatever it would take to make Bran the Broken make some sort of sense.

They effectively put medieval Lawnmower Man on the throne - because Tyrion said so... That still makes my head hurt.

I'm soooo glad I quit GOT at the first real dragon!

After that it was pretty much just a comic strip with a lot of gore and some T&A.

I have to admit though, the sausage scene was pretty awesome!

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

So, he doesn't really say a damn thing really.

Not sure if I will finish the books now or not.
There are TONS of other good books out there, that Hollywood hasn't ruined, and the authors haven't sold out, so I'm good.

a reply to: Hefficide


He's strongly said that option 1 is not true. I'm banking on option 3 since he's a notorious procrastinator.

I'd like this to be more fleshed out, the novels are so nuanced and detailed but frankly I just wanted to know who 'won' at this point since I've been waiting 20 years since the first book and that is a huge fan disservice.

originally posted by: chiefsmom
So, he doesn't really say a damn thing really.

There's another embedded story in the link I gave you, he's always said they end the same way but certain character's arcs may be different by small or large degrees.

I have no doubt that A Dream of Spring ends with Bran the Broken on the Iron Throne, so to speak.

a reply to: JustJohnny

Dany was also always action/reaction.

She was never much into just up and killing innocents for no reason. She might have gone in and burninated the castle, but left the city alone. Instead she burned it all with no setup to that action aside from her ancestry. It was out of character for her to that point.

Now, she could have been put on the path to that given time. Given who she is, given things she has done, it's not something she would never, ever have done, but at her point in the story, it wasn't something entirely believable. They needed time to make it in character for her at that point in her story. Time they didn't have.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus
Again, if that is the case, that is what I meant by selling out, (Selling the true ending), and was totally not fair, as you said, to his TRUE fans, the reader of his books.
We waiting so long, to have the end ruined.

What kind of Author does that?

Especially when you are old, and going through all of the trouble of training these young kids how to finish your book, if you croak?

originally posted by: DanDanDat

originally posted by: ketsuko
Daenerys:

Hey, I've been a strong woman through so much diversity all this time, and you never got any impression that I was even hinting at breaking, but sure ... script says I'm nuts, so I AM!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

BURN, BURN, BURN IT ALL!

I disagree; I only watch the show casually, I am not a fan but my wife is. I haven't seen all the episodes; but in a few that I did Daenerys always made morally questionable decisions. They usually ended up with the "bad guy" dieing but that doesn't negate the moral implications of her actions.

I believe the short guy said as much in the lead up to her death.

We're not debating morality though.

We're debating madness. Daenerys (along with damn near every other character in power in the series) made lots of morally questionable, horrific decisions, but you can do those without being mad.

What we saw is her go from being more or less mentally stable to acting like a stark (see what I did there?), raving mad woman at the drop of a hat to explain her sudden horrible decisions - like burning down an entire city.

a reply to: chiefsmom

Speaking of which...I remember the first movie I saw after I had read the book. I remember how I was looking forward to seeing the movie, and how thoroughly disappointed I was when I saw it. It was ...The Hunt for Red October. It kind of made sense a little bit though because if they would have put all the detail from the book into the movie it would have been about 9 hours long.

Then they started making movies out of a lot of different books (more than usual). Another one which was just a complete bastardization was Ludlum's...Bourne Identity. I actually kind of like the movies, but I have to constantly remind myself not to even think about the books at all when watching them. They're almost unrecognizable from the books. In fact, it was one of the (much) later Bourne movies which finally filled in some of the critical missing pieces from the first movie (which was fully spelled out at the beginning of the first book). I thought that was really odd. I wondered if they did that because all the die-hard Ludlum fan's complaints. Up until that point (in the movies) you never knew the very beginning of the Jason Bourne story.

The Hollyweirds also really butchered Ludlum's...Osterman Weekend...too! I mean really, how could anyone cast Craig T. Nelson in a Ludlum film???

originally posted by: chiefsmom

We waiting so long, to have the end ruined.

I personally didn't have a major problem with the ending, it wasn't some canned fairy tale conclusion. Could they have done a few more episodes? Maybe. But the major plot points were all developed over years and now that I look back they should have been obvious to anyone who wasn't hoping for the happy ending.

One of the very few positive things to happen in this finale was Ghost finally...got some pets.

a reply to: ketsuko

Again I'm not a fan of the show; so I don't have an emotional investment in Daenerys and her image.

The events of the last season were certainly rushed in order to fit the compressed schedule; but I would not describe the actions by Daenerys to be the action of a mad woman.

They are the actions of a determined woman; she was locked into a corse of action that she thought would best lead to her desired outcome... an outcome she thought was nobel and worth making sacrifices for... even the sacrifice of allowing herself to take drastic measures she would have to live with.

In the preceding episodes she discovered that "love was not enough" in her pursuit to reshape the world for the better. Her followers love would only take her so far and that she was reaching that limit... her greatest supporters where beginning to question and defigh her dispit all the love they genuinely had for her.

In that moment when she was talking to John about love not being enough she was resigning her self to the fact that "fear" was what she was missing. Her followers loved her yes, but they did not fear her and because of that they would always be pushing the boundaries of her authority. They would continue to do what they thought was right despite her greater pursuits.

This was further addressed by the fact that she cried right before she went in and decimated the city. She was not happy with her chosen course of action. She knew it was wrong but still felt it was necessary. The body language in the acting showed quite clearly that she was hoping that the city wouldn't surrender so that the choice was out of her hands. But when she was forced to make the choice it pained her.

These are not the actions of a mad woman. They are what may happen when even the most noble amongst us are charged to bring order to a chaotic world.

"The path to hell is paved in good intentions"

And

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

Are not ingrained in our collective psyche because they describe bad or mad people; but because they describe what can happen to all of us, even the best of us, under the right circumstances.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus
I meant ruined the ending of the books. Gave it away. No point in reading.

a reply to: chiefsmom

Oh I disagree..

The books are so dense.. I find new stuff every reread.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Yup

a reply to: ketsuko

The last arc was a right turn for sure, but people forget the whole series is an indictment of birthright monarchy...


Guess what gave dany her justification for all the killing she did??

Birthright monarchy..

If we assume dany never had a “right to rule” then she was always a monster..


At least once hitting Westeros where “freeing the slaves” was no longer her justification.

If you look at it like she had no more right to rule than cerci. It is a very different story.

The way they left things, Tyrion will be making all the decisions about governance anyway,

Bran couldn't even make it through his first meeting without running off somewhere to "zone out", ostensibly to go look for Drogon.

So it looks like, if this is any indication, Bran will spend most of his time sitting in his wheelchair with his eyes rolled back in his head, recording events he obviously and regretfully prefers to keep to himself, while his Hand assumes the tasks of running the seven kingdoms.

originally posted by: chiefsmom

I meant ruined the ending of the books. Gave it away. No point in reading.

I'm still going to read them when and if he finishes them since there will be differences and I like the richness of the story.

Bran is effectively omnipresent. Actually that's wrong because he's not Bran anymore anyway - he's the Three Eyed Raven, an ancient spirit connected to the wood folk. The same ones who created the Knight King.

An omnipresent and nearly all knowing ancient spirit that possessed a young boy, openly manipulated several of the key characters and then ascended to the Throne.

If there's actually subtext to the end of this story it's that the good nobles of the Kingdoms might have put their own version of the antichrist into a position of absolute power.

A potential antichrist whose last lines were to ask where the dragon went, before quipping that he might have to use his spooky powers to find him.