Game of Thrones - Please no spoilers from ASOIAF

[Army_Allen]

Me too! I love the hound!

Any chance he kills that huge knight that guards the short haired queen?

His brother, the mountain? Im not thinking so anymore. It just seems forever away and I'm not sure that plan on paying that bit of fan service off anymore. I think it could be an Arya kill now even though she doesn't have him on her list she might do it for the Hound. Just my thoughts.

 

[zoogs]

Spoiler

Can't say I agree at all. Like lots of fantasy stories, the characters got separated. Then we found out about each of them and their stories individually. Then when they started to come together the number of stories whittled back down and the climax has started from a much smaller # of character PoVs. We don't need to spend 10 episodes on traveling anymore. The purpose of that was to introduce and grow the characters, not because the traveling mattered. This is pretty much exactly what happened with my favorite book series. As soon as the characters started making their way back together it went at a breakneck pace. We'd already learned about who they were, it was time for them to do what they were meant to do. With GoT we are now in the phase where they do the sh#t they were meant to do.

Well, I think there were two ways of how this could go: 1) an unfolding epic focused on telling the story of the world, with each chapter being no more or less important or 2) 6 seasons of setup and 2 seasons of payoff. It feels like 2 and I wish it would be 1.

Part of how the series has held me in thrall lately (I got into it later than most) is wondering about what little things mean. With the way they're executing this finish, though, I think what they're saying is "Don't read into stuff. Just sit back, and watch us move the chess pieces."

I mean, on some level I do want to see some payoff for our favorite characters. I'd just like it better if they were just pieces of what is clearly a larger universe. "What happens to Westeros" vs "What happens to these characters" being dominant. Maybe it's a small distinction, but I don't know if I care that much about any of the characters enough to watch it be all the fate of the fan favorites. OTOH, I do care about what we learn about Westeros: what traits succeed there, what gets punished, what gets rewarded, and how the inhabitants of the world reckon with its changing.

I was thinking about the epilogue to HP7 recently. It was just a really unnecessary slapdash of "Oh, and by the way, ___ marries ___, and their kids are named ____ and _____ and ____." That's what this feels like, a little bit, except replace "by the way" with "...and these outcomes are what the entire rest of the show has existed for the purpose of getting to." I'm not explaining myself well but that's a little bit of a bummer.

 

[Ratt Mhule]

Me too! I love the hound!

Any chance he kills that huge knight that guards the short haired queen?

His brother, the mountain? Im not thinking so anymore. It just seems forever away and I'm not sure that plan on paying that bit of fan service off anymore. I think it could be an Arya kill now even though she doesn't have him on her list she might do it for the Hound. Just my thoughts.

The Mountain is on her list

 

[Army_Allen]

Me too! I love the hound!

Any chance he kills that huge knight that guards the short haired queen?

His brother, the mountain? Im not thinking so anymore. It just seems forever away and I'm not sure that plan on paying that bit of fan service off anymore. I think it could be an Arya kill now even though she doesn't have him on her list she might do it for the Hound. Just my thoughts.

The Mountain is on her list

You're right. Do you remember why exactly? I can't...

 

[Mierin]

Me too! I love the hound!

Any chance he kills that huge knight that guards the short haired queen?

His brother, the mountain? Im not thinking so anymore. It just seems forever away and I'm not sure that plan on paying that bit of fan service off anymore. I think it could be an Arya kill now even though she doesn't have him on her list she might do it for the Hound. Just my thoughts.

The Mountain is on her list

You're right. Do you remember why exactly? I can't...

I googled it. For torturing people at Harrenhal.

 

[Landlord]

You'd probably feel a good bit differently if you'd been watching slowly over 7 years, zoogs.

And I'd imagine that's part of the rationale with their approach. Attention span doesn't last forever, regardless of how enthralling your subject matter is. How many 100% narrative arc shows (not counting shows that have "monster of the week" type episodes to go along with their mythos) last longer than 7-8 seasons, and of those, how many end on a very high note?

 

[zoogs]

Yeah, that's true.

I caught up last summer after reading a lot of articles on the episodes, from Vox in particular. It was getting really interesting to me that, for example, all of the show's heroes were apparently incompetent, like Jon Snow. So it's equally a bit uncomfortable right now that it looks like such a traditional "good guys get it together" finish. There's rationale to this, sure. I think we're also really seeing the limitations of budget and having moved so far past the source material.

I still think there are interesting ways they could go with this. To me, the neatest thing to see would be Jon & Dany losing the entirety of their heroic good-person sheen in their quest for power, and Cersei ending up a relative hero. Perhaps that's the payoff to the setup this season that has so far served to magnify the difference in virtue between the two camps.

 

[Mierin]

At least I got one thing right.

Spoiler

I thought the dragons would recognize Jon as family.

They liked Tyrion too but I don't think it's 'cause he's related I think it's 'cause he's a bad a$$.

 

[Mierin]

I still think there are interesting ways they could go with this. To me, the neatest thing to see would be Jon & Dany losing the entirety of their heroic good-person sheen in their quest for power, and Cersei ending up a relative hero. Perhaps that's the payoff to the setup this season that has so far served to magnify the difference in virtue between the two camps.

GRRM's done a pretty good job of pushing the envelope. I can see why you'd have expectations like this. I thought he did an excellent job in the books with making Jaime more and more likeable after he did something unforgivable. You even started cheering for the guy. I like him in the show, too, even though I shouldn't. The other thing was with Cersei. She was an awful, awful b!^@h (she hadn't even blown up the sept yet), but I felt sorry for her when she had to walk naked through the city.

 

[Mierin]

Question for book readers or maybe even show watchers, because I have a bad memory...

Were there lots of reasons the first war started (the one where Robert/Ned and Co marched to King's Landing and Robert became king) and Lyanna's "kidnapping" was the tip of the iceberg, or was Lyanna's "kidnapping" a major event that started it? The mad king was called that for a reason but I wonder if the war would have started without Rhaegar falling in love with her.

 

[B.B. Hemingway]

If someone wanted to explain the Rhaegar/Lyanna thing for me, that'd be great.... There's a +1 in it for you.

 

[zoogs]

Question for book readers or maybe even show watchers, because I have a bad memory...

Were there lots of reasons the first war started (the one where Robert/Ned and Co marched to King's Landing and Robert became king) and Lyanna's "kidnapping" was the tip of the iceberg, or was Lyanna's "kidnapping" a major even that started it? The mad king was called that for a reason but I wonder if the war would have started without Rhaegar falling in love with her.

I can't tell how out there this theory is, not being a book reader, but the world is so expansive it's hard not to trawl around the wikis every once in a while. Anyway, here's an interesting theory about the first war, and I kind of like the idea that there's doubt within the world about why it truly started: https://winteriscoming.net/2015/10/02/game-of-thrones-theorycrafting-southron-ambitions/

(I realize this isn't an answer but I'm probably not best equipped to be answering those things)

 

[Mierin]

If someone wanted to explain the Rhaegar/Lyanna thing for me, that'd be great.... There's a +1 in it for you.

Rhaegar Targaryen was the Mad King's son and heir to the throne. Daenerys is Rhaegar's sister.
Lyanna Stark was Robert Baratheon's betrothed and Ned Stark's sister.

Before Robert's Rebellion, the war that dethroned the Mad King and led to Robert becoming king, Rhaegar "kidnapped" Lyanna, or that's the story from the good guys' perspective. At the start of the story we learn that the Targaryens are the bad guys and Robert/Ned are the good guys.

But throughout the series there have been small little hints that the story was wrong. For instance, pretty much every time Rhaegar is mentioned, it's to say what a great guy he was. Basically everything about him was good, even though he was a Targaryen. It always made it seem really weird that he did what he did to Lyanna. He also won a tournament at one point and surprised everyone by (IIRC) giving flowers to Lyanna. Some other hinted things throughout the series (might've even been in book 1) were Lyanna had a big secret that she told Ned. On top of that we hear that Ned is basically this perfect gentleman type, and how extremely odd it was that he cheated on Cat and had a bastard.

So putting all that together the very believable theory came about that Jon was Ned's nephew and that he promised Lyanna he wouldn't tell anyone. And it's a good thing he did, because Robert had every last Targaryen hunted down and murdered. The ones he could find, anyway. In the books, it hasn't been revealed yet. But in the show it was revealed in Season 6 that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, through Bran's visions.

 

[zoogs]

^And now, it was revealed that

Spoiler

Rhaegar had a secret hush-hush marriage in Dorne. Although the only one who knows is Gilly, and Samwise Gamgee, I mean Tarly, has left the Citadel.

 

[B.B. Hemingway]

Rhaegar Targaryen was the Mad King's son and heir to the throne. Daenerys is Rhaegar's sister.
Lyanna Stark was Robert Baratheon's betrothed and Ned Stark's sister.

Before Robert's Rebellion, the war that dethroned the Mad King and led to Robert becoming king, Rhaegar "kidnapped" Lyanna, or that's the story from the good guys' perspective. At the start of the story we learn that the Targaryens are the bad guys and Robert/Ned are the good guys.

But throughout the series there have been small little hints that the story was wrong. For instance, pretty much every time Rhaegar is mentioned, it's to say what a great guy he was. Basically everything about him was good, even though he was a Targaryen. It always made it seem really weird that he did what he did to Lyanna. He also won a tournament at one point and surprised everyone by (IIRC) giving flowers to Lyanna. Some other hinted things throughout the series (might've even been in book 1) were Lyanna had a big secret that she told Ned. On top of that we hear that Ned is basically this perfect gentleman type, and how extremely odd it was that he cheated on Cat and had a bastard.

So putting all that together the very believable theory came about that Jon was Ned's nephew and that he promised Lyanna he wouldn't tell anyone. And it's a good thing he did, because Robert had every last Targaryen hunted down and murdered. The ones he could find, anyway. In the books, it hasn't been revealed yet. But in the show it was revealed in Season 6 that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, through Bran's visions.

Awesome. Thanks, Moiraine.