RobertDeSneero

You advocate a bunch of telling and not showing with filler conversations. The show has de-emphasized the importance of prophecy. See, for example, no mention of the valonqar in Cersei's prophesy. I believe that the showrunners want to simplify the story by not delving into the prophesy about the Prince That Was Promised, mentioning it a few times as a bit of fan service to book readers, but not making it an essential part of the story. In the show, Rhaegar did it for love. In the books, there may be more than that, but in adapting it to television, you have to make choices. This is a very reasonable choice to make because dropping it doesn't change the shape of the story and you don't have to choose between explaining it via Bran talking and talking and talking or filming a flashback scene. You don't need a conversation to show why Sansa tells Tyrion. Obviously, she is trying to manipulate him. She doesn't trust Daenerys and wants this information to be used against her. If you do need to show why she told him, then the correct way to portray that would be to have her conversation with Tyrion be longer. Maybe he wonders aloud why she is telling him and hypothesizes about possible motives. She looks at him but doesn't react, so we are left to wonder a bit, but at least we have some ideas and it makes Tyrion look smart. Bran doesn't have an emotional stake in how this is resolved, now that he is the Three-Eyed Raven. He is now the memory of the world. He cares about there still being a world to remember. He is more detached when it comes to how that world exists. Arya cares only about crossing another name of her list. How does discussing it help her kill Cersei? Jon doesn't think he is in any danger to process. He loves her and she loves him. He believes she wouldn't harm her. In the books, I suspect that she won't be mad, but that Martin will instead try to make her seem like she is doing this for rational reasons. If I were writing this, one addition I would have made would be to have Varys comment a few times on how Dany reminds him of her father, who he served. The first few times would be when she is doing something that the audience considers positive and he might remark on how Aerys was once a good man. The goal is to be subtle about it and avoid hitting viewers over the head with a clue-by-four that, of course, she's going to turn. The story I would want to tell is not that Dany is a good woman gone mad, but that she isn't quite as good as people assumed she was and that she said she was going to break the wheel when really she is just going to perpetuate it. In our modern world, are we not used to politicians who claim that they are better, that they are going to clean house, and turn out to be just as bad and sometimes worse than the bums they want thrown out? I get that people want Dany to be the triumphant hero who changes things for the better, but Martin grew up in an age which made people like him cynical about politics and war. It seems more in keeping with this story that someone who gets built up as that hero ends up either dead or not a hero.

I adamantly believe that showing Arya, Jon, and Sansa talk about his birth is only useful if the goal is to show conflict between the three. What exactly are they supposed to talk about that the audience needs to hear? The important part of that scene is that Sansa makes a promise that she breaks. We don't need Bran to retell a story that everyone should know. And Sansa and Arya probably reacted by not saying anything and shuffling off to think about it on their own, anyways. Well, Sansa probably did. Arya probably shrugged and went back to practicing archery because it doesn't affect her plan to kill Cersei. The people who should be talking about the implications of his birth are Jon and Dany, because of how it affects his claim, and Tyrion and Varys. Dany was planning on burning King's Landing. We don't see her say, "My battle plan is to treat the people of King's Landing as enemy combatants and burn them", but we do hear Tyrion begging with her to treat them as innocent hostages instead after what I think was Dany saying something along those lines. Do you really need her to say those words or can the writers trust viewers to be able to figure it out from context? I think her descent into madness, and I'm not convinced it was madness that made her burn King's Landing, is supposed to come off as more sudden than you want it to be. It's supposed to be a change in her that is sufficiently rapid that you don't think Jon and Tyrion are stupid for not noticing where she was heading.

I'm fine if writers don't feel obligated to cater to stupid audience members who are easily confused.

I wouldn't say that Ned was bad at ruling. He was bad at political intrigue. He would probably be a competent Hand if given the chance. What is bad is someone who seeks power for the sake of power, because that person seeks to obtain and maintain power and everything else becomes something worth compromising. Does someone like Dany seek the Iron Throne as an end into itself, doing what is moral and fighting against evil only if that is the best path to power, or does she serve a higher purpose?

Is that like how the show never really intended for Robb to be the dead guy to this extent?

Some entitled crybabies who are probably mad because of how Season 8 has invalidated their fanfic have signed a change.org petition to re-do season 8 "with competent writers". It kind of reminds me who were upset because The Last Jedi didn't match their wants and desires.

I've never really believed this talking point. There are six episodes this season, but you have the runtime of eight episodes, just chopped up into larger chunks so that the two major battles are in uninterrupted episodes instead of two parters. If they were rushing the show, they would have figured out a way to get it done so they didn't have to skip airing in 2018. I think they tend to come up with the episode-ending moments that they want to highlight and fill in the pages in between. They sketched out six moments and decided to make some extra-long episodes. They were going to have Dany go straight from Winterfell to King's Landing, demonstrating her impulsiveness and desire for instant gratification without concern for the lesser folk who make up her army.

There is a difference between someone who is negligent in his duties and someone who doesn't want to rule but accepts the responsibility when it is thrust upon him.

It's been established on the show that Jon Snow knows nothing, so it is in character for him to be wrong about her.

I'm not convinced this was an act of madness, but even if it were, I don't think the story has to be a slow and noticeable descent into madness. If she is depressed, a major depressive episode can sometimes have a sudden onset out of nowhere. I believe I have a reasonable case that she planned on burning King's Landing if the city didn't surrender, but the bells triggered her to follow through even though the city was surrendering. Even before Missandei was beheaded, Dany wanted to attack the city and have people know that it was Cersei's fault that the walls were talking down on top of them. Varys and Tyrion were the ones who convinced her to give Cersei a chance to surrender, which she only agreed to because she thought it would make her look good, and she no longer trusts them. The more I think about, the more I am convinced that she never expected the bells to ring and is embarking on the course she would have taken if they hadn't.

It would be shocking if we saw the Unsullied raping.

Jorah is dead. Missandei is dead. She feels alienated from Jon. She doesn't trust Tyrion. My theory is that Grey Worm proposed that she unleash dragonfire on the people. He is in that meeting but doesn't say anything because he already spoke before the cut. Does he seem happy when Dany agrees to stop if the bells ring?

To be clear, mention of the valonqar is a book-only thing. Dany has been show to be willing to treat her enemies brutally. She was shown arguing with Tyrion that the common folk of King's Landing are her enemies and not innocent hostages. Therefore, she is willing to treat them brutally because she sees them as enemies. It's a simple syllogism.

I think there is a good chance he kills them off before the last book. The show gave them both a bigger role, I suspect.

I disagree with that somewhat. I think she had a battle plan that included burning the city. I think Tyrion tried to prevent that by sending Jaime to try to get Cersei to surrender. I think Dany snapped when the bells rang and decided to burn it all down anyways.

In terms of pacing her story, I think it is important that she be seen as heroic after the battle at Winterfell and her turn comes afterwards. It has to be quick enough so that we don't think the other characters are even dumber for not noticing and trying to stop her. At the point that the bells ring, we're not supposed to think that her torching the city is inevitable.

For GRRM, the universe isn't always just and people don't always get what they deserve. We see this when people who deserve to live end up dying gruesome deaths, but the other side of this is that sometimes people who deserve to die end up living or at least having a much kinder fate than they deserve. It's only odd if you expect justice. The game of thrones goes on and we don't enter a golden era of justice now that the Big Bad has been defeated.

I'm fairly certain that Dany burning King's Landing is unpublished book material. The Night King and Clegane Bowl are examples of things that I think D&D added that won't be in the books.

She believes that the North can protect itself, that it will never accept an outsider ruling over then again after having reasserted it's independence.

I don't think Dany is bad. I just don't think she is better than anyone else playing the game. She's not as bad as Cersei, certainly not as bad as Joffrey. She's not better than Sansa. She's not better than Stan is Baratheon or Olenna Tyrell or Doran Martell. One point of the show is blasting apart the trope that defeating an existential threat such as the Night King is a signifier of moral superiority. She's not going to surrender if it just means being taken prisoner and executed. Tyrion believed that the key to getting her to give up was to provide a way for her to save her baby.

I think a lot of viewers didn't get that because they seem to think Dany would never attack innocents when she was already planning on it in the show. It was edited in a way so that people who thought of her as the good savior of Westeros were supposed to miss it and be shocked by her actions.

I have a different theory. I believe Dany was discussing plans to attack the people directly because she saw them as enemies and not hostages and Tyrion saw Jaime as his best chance to get Cersei to surrender before Dany could do that. Then, Dany did it anyways despite the bells ringing.

My favorite part of the books in The Scouring of the Shire . GRRM is also a fan. Tolkien was grounded in myth, so he has Aragorn be the winner of the final battle who becomes a wise and just ruler. Martin is grounded in history. For him, outcomes shouldn't be so neat because that's not what happens in the real world. Defeating the Night King doesn't lead to the end of the game of thrones and the establishment of a golden age of Westeros. The wheel keeps spinning. Breaking the wheel is the new draining the swamp. For all of her rhetoric, Daenerys is still part of the same game. Dany is just another warmonger who is quick to choose violence as her path. (Note that Martin was a conscientious objector during Vietnam.) If we follow this to its logical conclusion, Jon either needs to be a game player or he becomes the next Ned Stark, unless another player (Sansa?) finds him to be a useful tool. Or maybe he can head north beyond the Wall with the Wildlings and leave the game altogether. Maybe Dany's best path is to abandon the game and go back to Essos. Dany believes she can rule through either love or fear. She is not loved in Westeros, so she chooses fear. Arguably, this is the correct choice if she cares about ruling. She decides that the way to be feared is to go with shock and awe now, that being merciless in the present will be a mercy to those in the future who she won't have to kill to maintain her power. The show would be better off making her choice one that was reasoned rather than a moment of madness for a crazy woman with a weapon of mass destruction between her legs. I wish the show would present her as a "Mad Queen" who isn't really mad, who may be well-intentioned but who chooses means that we find abhorent to justify an end that we thought we wanted.

That's as silly as ending The Lord of the Rings with Aragorn becoming king.

I don't think they wanted her played differently. They wanted her played in a way that was consistent with a heroic arc.