Now That it's Here....

[CovertSphinx 710]

It's here. There's one episode left and then its all over. What do you guys think so far? I've heard a lot of chatter of disappointment on the interwebs as a whole, but some of it makes me wonder what they actually expected in the first place.

[PixieMegs 107]

Imma...just go ahead and answer this many moons later. 

 

So. As a whole I was disappointed. Not necessarily because of character outcomes or deaths, but the writing felt cheap and rushed. They had a limited number of episodes, since they decided to end the series prematurely, and instead of utilizing every bit for growth and wrapping up plot-lines they gave us long dragon riding fun and other unnecessary bits. I'm not screaming and shouting saying I wanted closure, but I did want things to make sense. 

 

Daenerys going mad, in my opinion, was never meant to be her story arch. I'm not even sure she will leave Essos in the books because she is so determined to fix what is wrong there. She is GRRMs revolution character. She's mad and gonna fuck some shit up, but she's always had a good heart. Her ending made very little sense to me, but I understand why they felt they had to do that. I just don't agree with it.

 

To be quite frank, Sansa should have been made Queen if they were going to kill Dany off. She was the most capable but they also attempted to villainize her in the last season (and season 7).  Bran is absolutely useless but whatever XD

 

UHM I really wanted a Cersei redemption arc. I'm a huge Cersei fan girl. I think she's an incredibly character and had has an interesting and traumatic story. I feel like if we gave Jaime (who raped his sister, tried to kill Bran, and killed his cousin) a redemption---it's only fair that she got one too.

 

I have a lot of feelings. but I do have lots of praise!!! The music this season was absolutely phenomenal. Oh my god. I listen to it all the time and it just gives me chills. I want that man to compose music for my life, it would be significantly more entertaining. Also, the acting (as usual) was beautiful. They all did so good and I love them so much. The cinematography was also stunning. I know there were a lot of complaints about the battle of winterfell, but let me tell you. I watched it in the dark and the atmosphere was astounding. I loved it. 

 

Also, I'm here to Arya killing the NK. Get it. 

 

I'm done ❤️

[Arceus 1,082]

-heaves a sigh-

 

So basically GoT Season 8 was utter shit. That was not a bittersweet ending that was just rampant mismanagement and trying to take too many shortcuts to get to what they wanted to do because it was horseshit and they couldn't even justify it to themselves because they'd written themselves into corner and then happily gave themselves a not-so-subtle pat on the back in the last episode during the - and what the fuck was Tyrion - okay. I'm getting upset again. Lol I can't talk about this utter crap without getting really stressed out about it.

 

The whole Night King and whatnot thing was basically built up for seven seasons and then ended in the most miserable way. That was such... I don't even... asjkdf jksdbfj Like what the fuck. That was a humongous cop-out. Arya had nothing to do with any of this most of the series and then suddenly ohey wonder what this'll do if I stab you with it Oh look you died... and so did your army... and that was like a lot of loss over basically nothing???

 

what

 

See, okay. Here's where I'm at on this, when they ran out of source material, despite the fact Martin told them where he was going to end up, they couldn't put the pieces together. Martin apparently spins his tales in a very complex manner. There are all kinds of plot points and loose threads and strings connecting everything together in unconventional ways, and the show writers just could not spin it the same way. So when they ran out of material, they had to basically bullshit their way through it, but the problem is that they don't understand all the little nuances that make the series actually very good despite the fact it's not special. It's a low-fantasy box of tropes and grit, essentially War of the Roses with dragons, and yet still somehow manages to be good enough that half the world is pissed off right now. (Because of all the little interconnecting pieces and background information and etc etc, it's a very character-driven work.)

 

Ultimately, the characters started doing their own thing. They basically took on a life of their own and headed in their own directions, and the problem with that was that the show writers still wanted to stick to the supposed ending that Martin has in store at the end of the books. But these are not the book characters anymore. There is no way they turned out anything like they will in the upcoming books because they are not Martin and don't think the same way that he does. So, essentially they ruined themselves by trying too hard to get to a set ending without letting the story tell itself. They got to endings that did not and could never make any sense because of where the characters started to move in the intervening seasons.

 

Nobody got any closure at all. Cersei got reduced to a whimpering little girl in the last moments of her life, Jaime made all kinds of stupid decisions, Tyrion turned really dumb and for that matter so did Varys, the Dothraki hordes wavered between huge and not so huge on a whim (magically regenerating armies yay!), can we talk for a second about Rhaegal because man the show did him dirty wtf, at least Viserion went down as heroically as a dragon can go, the whole Winterfell everything because oh my god Sansa can you get off your straw horse please like can we just accept for a second that everything she did was really stupid from a diplomatic standpoint, in the face of someone whose armies and support she needed to save her people and then the only thing Sansa can think to do in return is hide in the crypts while Daenerys risks her life and armies and her dragon children to save Winterfell. Oh, and bitch. Sansa did a lot of loud, blatant bitching, which is also not smart. And suddenly know things she shouldn't. Because Daenerys showed zero signs of "madness" until the last few episodes. It's like Sansa suddenly turned into a plot puppet instead of a well-developed, intelligent character.

 

And don't even get me started on Daenerys. I stand with Daenerys. That was not my queen that was a ridiculous and pretty ableist caricature of her. I have a fundamental problem with how they treat the Targaryen madness in the show: that's not how mental illness works. And someone that struggles with mental illness I'm outright pissed off. I even figured out how to make Daenerys' madness manifestation make sense in context with her character on the show and I can't find it right now but basically I know of several personality disorders that cause something called splitting, where the person sees things as just good and bad. Black and white. Someone can be a perfect angel until they do something ostensibly bad and then they're horrible, there is no in-between or allowance for occasional mistakes. And ultimately I think Daenerys would split really bad and try murdering all the lords in Westeros because they're all bad absolutely 100%, like okay I can go for that. I mean technically she did that in Meereen when she crucified whatever lords she could find, no matter what they supported or didn't. But King's Landing? Because of a building? No. And this even falls through because she's thought very long and hard about destroying everyone in Westeros and continuously backs down from it. You don't just suddenly snap for no reason and Dracarys everything to the ground, what??

 

And can we just universal what the fuck gesture at how Jon is ALSO a Targaryen and nobody's afraid of HIM losing his mind, or making him prove that he's not crazy or tyrannical over and over and over and OVER AND OVER. All they have to even prove his bloodlines is Bran (unless someone found something I'm forgetting). Bran be like, Jon's a Targaryen and Rhaegar and Lyanna got married first, and Westeros be like "and this is Katara, my flying sister." Never mind that none of Rhaegar and Lyanna getting married first makes sense.

 

To make short of it, the trope of a male character having to kill his female lover because she Did The Bad bothers me on a fundamental core level because this happens in reality all the time. I am one of those it could have easily happened to, but fortunately I'm still breathing. This is the kind of mindset an abuser has. "I had to do it." They make themselves the victim in their head. Most women victims of a homicide were killed by someone they know very well, with a huge number of that amount being allotted to a partner or former partner killing them, while a smaller fraction of them were killed by a family member. This is how abusers frame themselves. "I didn't want to, but you made me. Look what you made me do." We should not at all be perpetuating this idea that this kind of violence can be justified outside of a legitimate self-defence situation.

 

Sansa was literally reduced to being jealous because Daenerys was pretty. D&D said this in an interview, it's basically canon. Cersei was reduced to just a girl who didn't want to die, what? Daenerys was murdered by her nephew and lover. It was all bad. And it's a shame because it was the first time we had two queens going to war with each other, and both were invalidated and killed in the stupidest and pretty sexist ways.

 

Basically, my problem with season 8 is not season 8 itself but rather what it represents. Because at that moment, honestly, that both queens were gone in really stupid ways, you realised that the writers pretty much just built up all your dreams and then didn’t even care enough to kill them honourably at the end. Like, you’d just spent so many years caring so much about something that the writers were like “Okay and this isn’t fun anymore so screw all of you.” I have Feelings.