loki567

Just to point out, Harvey Weinstein's criminal case is still ongoing. It was his civil case that was recently settled.

I wouldn't be shocked if this is true. One of the interesting things about Big Brother and its live feeds, is when they have a season where a contestant does something awful, racism or sexism-wise, and the audience sees it play out live. Most of the time, people who were supporting said racist or sexist in the house, would end up supporting them on the outside as well, usually with arguments of, "You don't know what really happened." But I charge it's the players in that situation don't know what really happened because they're so in "game mode," that they can't have proper perspective on everything. They don't want to admit to themselves that they supported bad behavior, bad behavior that sometimes had nothing to do with game, and so they excuse that bad behavior outside the game as well. I have no doubt that Dan would have his defenders from the cast. But the only people I want to hear from about the situation is Kellee, Missy, or anyone else who might have direct knowledge of his behavior.

Tommy specifically mentioned Kellee going to Harvard, her downplaying going to Harvard, her being extremely smart, her ability to bond with her target, Missy, right before as she was planning to vote her out, as reasons he was concerned about Kellee. She also wanted to move one of her "numbers," aka Dean, ahead of the other Lairo, who Tommy and Lauren were closer with, of the chopping block. That seems pretty fair to me in the context of Survivor. The fact that Tommy is getting painted with the same brush as Dan in a situation that Tommy's only tangentially involved with, is a pretty good example of why a large chunk of men aren't going to always "believe women," and have their guard up in situations like this. And that guard in turn will protect a lot of men who don't deserve to be protected.

I'm getting a little nervous about Survivor giving social lessons. Why? Because this is a fundamentally selfish game. There is a women's alliance. Jamal correctly called it out. The women framed it as sexism to back him down and he did, because he's probably worried about his career back home. I'm just not sure if Survivor should be painting one side or viewpoint as completely "right," when every move out there has an agenda. I don't think it really "educates," people. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it's a negative. Because the people who need to be educated will chalk these conversations up to selfish motives.

Am I the only one who hated the vote steal? Old Vokai did everything right. They won the challenges to get the majority and even when the numbers were spread out, they were able to convince Aaron and Missy to flip. That's what you're suppose to do in Survivor. These vote steals/nullifers feel very unfair, in a way that HIs don't. With HIs, there's still a lot of luck involved. There's no real way to plan around vote steals or overcome them. You're just put in a position to beg for mercy. I don't blame Old Vokai members for their first reaction being pissed. I'd be pissed too. I especially don't like the fact that the editors have to trash them in order to justify or build up this moment to the audience. I don't think

I'll say it again, as much as HBO considers itself an auteur's paradise, when it became clear that there was tons more story left to properly finish the series and D&D wanted to wrap up as quickly as possible to do Star Wars, the franchise should have been taken from them. Because this is the type of shit that happens when you half-ass it. D&D ultimately lose their Star Wars movies and untold damage was done to one of the biggest global franchises going right now. I know the Targaryen series is still in development but I'd be willing to bet money we don't ever see it. In fact, I'm 50/50 if we see anything Thrones-related for the next 10/15 years. HBO is probably going to put a lot of time between GoT's finale and whatever ultimately does make it to the screen.

Ooh, I like that. Especially since Kendall would need some way to get out from under the threat of blackmail if he was going to make a move on Logan. I definitely got the feeling that Kendall's decision wasn't spur of the moment. He seemed like he was steeling himself all episode long for what he was about to do. Hell, he might have immediately guessed Logan's move when Logan tried to scapegoat him during the DC hearing. I'm surprised that Greg decided to jump aboard Team Kendall. That seems like the way riskier move at this point. No guarantee that Kendall's going to come out top. I guess the biggest thing was the fact that Roman was willing to offer Greg up as a target so he figured he had no real relationships to Roman or Shiv, while Kendall has always been decent to him.

While I still think Rob and Sandra are a waste of time, I am liking their TC commentary. Particularly their open mouth reaction to the Molly blindside. Speaking of which, I hated the forced cool kids vs. nerds narrative. Hopefully that's enough of that.

Makes sense. It wasn't a fight. It was a lunge that lasted about 15 seconds.

I don't think the cast and crew will get rough treatment. The only issue about the final season was the writing. It probably will be a very lovely goodbye. Although I would give D&D some credit if they did show up.

But once again, that's complete speculation. If there was any proof D&D actually owned the rights at some point, any interviews or news reports, I would accept it. There isn't. It's HBO owned the rights and D&D developed it as exec producers. HBO wanted more episodes, D&D said no, HBO didn't want to go around their showrunners. That's usually a very commendable thing. But in this particular instance, it was a mistake as these showrunners clearly wanted out years ago and they delivered a substandard product in a shorter amount of time to make that happen. This might ultimately hurt the overall franchise. And HBO is still very much basing its future around this franchise.

"They won the right" is not "they own the rights." Considering how fiercely protective GRRM is of the property, I can't imagine he just signed over the rights, willy-nilly.

Not to sound too jerky, but that's complete speculation on your part, right? I haven't seen any proof that D&D ever actually owned the rights, just that they might have gotten GRRM's permission to pitch networks on adapting the series. The only thing I've seen for certain is that HBO owns the rights. And considering HBO's status as the creme de le creme of television networks (at least in 2008), the fact that D&D had no television experience to their name, that ASIOAF wasn't that big of a property back then, it's hard for me to imagine that D&D were able to lock themselves into a sweetheart deal like that.

That sounds like a separate issue to me. I'm not sure where you got your information from, specifically that D&D still own the rights, any sources? Going off of the Game of Thrones wiki (which granted, not very solid): And here's something from Variety when the show was first picked up:

George sold it to them, they sold it to HBO. No way a network wouldn't have the ability to take the show from a showrunner, with two guys had no television experience before GoT.

It's the only time I think the network would not only have been justified in taking a huge hit out of the showrunners' hands, but they probably should have. These guys were not Vince Gilligan. They weren't writers in the traditional sense ("themes are for eighth-grade book reports"). They were producers. Their job was to keep the train on time. At least until they decided they wanted to crash the train. D&D wanted to move on. Everybody else in the world wanted GoT to keep going. I know HBO views itself as an auteur paradise, but in this instance, they should have put their foot down, sent D&D off with a nice press release, and given GoT to a new showrunner, whether that be Cogman or whoever. Hell, maybe get GRRM.

Lena Headey and Jerome Flynn literally had it in their contracts that they'd never have to share a scene together due to a bad break-up. I'm guessing he skipped table reads.

Another point about Margaery surviving, it is possible that she could marry Bran? He'll need a queen. But it's unlikely they'll have any children. Ugh. Once again it racks my brain that GRRM would pick him for king. Just seems in the face of everything that comes before in the story that the lords of Westeros would pick the kid who can't produce a heir.

I don't want to sound pro-Tyrion/Sansa because I'm not. But I believe there's a reason that Martin is keeping it in the audience's minds. By the time they meet again, there's going to be major character development on both sides and there was suppose to be the five-year time jump which would have made Sansa 17 or 18. Their relationship would have been on much more palatable ground for book readers to get behind it. Virtually all of the Tyrion/Sansa scenes in the show happened S3 and S4, and then it's dropped until they're reunited in S8. Even then, there was no definite conclusion to it. I think it was simply a case that D&D didn't want to write romantic scenes for Sophie Turner and Peter Dinklage. As for their marriage in GoT: Tyrion is whitewashed in the show, the writers didn't want any extra grief coming Sansa's way for being too anti-Tyrion, so the entire marriage was written in a more positive light. Like you said, the writers used rape as positive character development. What they might find empowering is completely different from what most people find empowering. As for Sansa finding love again, there was almost literally no one who could have been an acceptable choice (for the audience) in the last season. Either they were too old, related to her, or would have been completely out of left field. I guess she could have had a casual hook-up with Pod. The fact there are so few romantic options available for Sansa at the end of the story, is once again something that I think suggests Tyrion/Sansa.

I don't agree that the show "propped up," Tyrion/Sansa. If anything, it's a much bigger deal in the books where several times it's mentioned that Tyrion and Sansa are still married and they still think about each other in their PoVs. The show completely dropped it after S4 besides their few interactions in S8. The books have a more middle ages sensibility about the marriage where child marriage is not such a big deal and Tyrion is in his 20s. The show has a more modern sensibility. Peter Dinklage was nearly 40 when the show started filming while Sophie Turner was 14. The writers never wanted to look at those two sharing scenes in a romantic context. And because of that, I'm also wondering if Sansa's ending might be completely different from the books to the screen and she remains married to Tyrion. I think the rape backlash from S5 led to the writers pushing hard on Sansa being a strong, powerful, independent woman. It's hard to imagine the ending goes down the same with The North alone being able to break off without Dorne or The Iron Islands doing the same thing. I think at the end of the story, The Seven Kingdoms will still be the Seven Kingdoms. D&D just wanted Sansa in some sort of a power position to counteract any sexism claims about women not having agency in the story.

Cersei - I agree with the idea that Cersei's probably dead in a relatively short time in the books. Her bull in a china shop approach won't keep working and she's always been treated mainly as a nuisance to the smarter characters. Blowing up the Sept isn't going to be a masterstroke but probably the end of her. F!Aegon will take the city. Jaime - if Cersei does die early, then that will almost certainly change Jaime's story arc. He's done with her by the end of AFFC and so I think he'll survive her by a quite bit. He'll probably still die but it might be in a much more heroic context against the Others. Margaery - I'm really curious if Margaery might survive the story. She might die in the Sept explosion but that might also be a show-only invention. Natalie Dormer wanted out of the show for years and D&D have that tendency to kill characters they don't need any more for story purposes. I can't imagine the Tyrells will be completely wiped off the map in the books. Stannis/Littlefinger - these are the two characters I'm most curious in the role they'll play in how the story ends. They're major characters the show marginalized to an extreme degree. Stannis might be the one to actually free the North from the Boltons while Littlefinger has almost been positioned as the series' human big bad. How will Stannis react to Robb's will naming Jon as his heir? How will the burning of Shireen go down? How will Littlefinger react to Dany? I think these two will make into the last book at least.

You sell the rights, you sell the rights. And without being too much of a morbid bastard about it, 10-15 years now George will be in his 80s. And I wonder if HBO came to him and said, "we want to make a 200 million dollar movie about the characters after GoT," if he even would step in the way of it. This is definitely not something I imagine happening any time soon but law of averages says a lot of the actors' careers are going to peak with GoT. A decade later, coming back to the series might sound a lot more appealing.

Call me crazy but did anyone else get the vibe that show might have been leaving open the possibly of continuing years down the line? It seems unthinkable right now, but we live in an era of television where nothing is ever truly finished. I won't be shocked if HBO doesn't make another run at a movie, miniseries, or another season with the same cast, depending how everyone's career's going, 10-15 years from now. Everything is still so wildly open-ended from The White Walkers (That wasn't the REAL NIGHT'S KING) to Dany (a red priest resurrection anyone?) could be hand-waved without that much problem.

When the spoilers leaked, I was expecting not to like it. But I'm surprised how boring it was. I legit started fast-forwarding through scenes. That's a very bad sign when this is suppose to be the last time I'll ever spend with these characters I've been following for 10 years.

I think you can blame them for casting him though. And maybe, just maybe, his character wouldn't have been so horrible if literally every one of his scenes wasn't him making a mess that other characters have to clean up. I reject the idea that they were doing the right thing in so obviously playing favorites. Lena Headey's good, sure. But there are plenty of good actors in this series. She wasn't so good that it was justified in Cersei completely consuming other parts of the story, including Jaime's entire character arc. But that's not really a Cersei-only problem either. There are plenty of instances of writers playing favorites and giving their favs screen-time that wasn't needed or storylines that should have gone to somebody else. Jon definitely got it worst, as everything was stripped from him until only a dufus remained.