Maximum Taco
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Ok, thought it through a bit more. Here are the story beats I would change (with the added episodes I need) for the War for the Dawn (6 Episodes)
Episode 1 - Winterfell - Largely the same episode with the following changes.
- Sansa is less cold towards Daenerys. I agree with her wariness, but Sansa is smart enough (or should be) to not show it so obviously. Courtesy is a lady's armor.
- Sansa is less cold towards Tyrion. Again wariness is warranted, but she should be seeing the asset he can be and should be using him for information on Daenerys. This will make her accusation that he's frightened of her later land with more impact, and will make Tyrion's consideration of Jon for the throne more of a threat.
- The old men actually bring their proposal of marriage to Jon and Dany. Jon rejects it as they need to concentrate on the war, but again this prospect needs to be brought up to Dany to have Jon's betrayal land harder.
- Family lines need to be drawn more clearly, there should be one scene with Sansa and Arya discussing Daenerys.
- There should be elephants. Why should we stand on the practicality of elephants travelling by sea when we won't stand on any other kind of practicality?
- Jon should object to a romantic jaunt on the Dragons with Dany. Dany should need to talk him into it more. I think this scene should still happen, it needs to be established that Jon can ride, and Jon and Dany need tender scenes to make their romance believable. When they reach the waterfall Dany should broach the subject of marriage again with Jon.
- Bran and Sam should tell Jon about his heritage together, he should be more resistant to the story. He's grown up as a son of Ned Stark and that's ingrained in him, Sam shouldn't be able to convince him by himself.
Episode 2 - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - Largely the same episode, this episode was pretty great and doesn't need many changes either.
- The subject of Jon and Dany's marriage should be brought up again. This time with Jorah talking to Jon. This would have a dual effect, it cements that Jorah has moved on from any romantic notions of Dany, and brings his story arc to a close, and it allows Jon to reject this violently. He won't tell Jorah why, but it should be obvious to us that he doesn't think he can have a relationship with his aunt.
- Instead of Bran's bullshit "I am the library of all time" answer he should say that he suspects that the Night King hopes to turn him and use his powers. Bran is at this point the most singularly powerful person in the world. The Night King should be wanting to use him not kill him. This also gives a reason for the Night King to come personally for Bran (if he just wants him dead there's no reason for him to come and risk injury to himself)
- Dany should talk to Jon about his response to Jorah's talk. She should say that if he doesn't want to marry her she understands, he'll tell her that he does want to, but cannot, and then reveal his heritage to her. The rest of the scene plays out normally.
- At the end of the episode we should be expecting an attack from the AOTD, instead though Winterfell begins receiving ravens. Instead of attacking Winterfell directly, the Night King has rerouted his army to those Northern holdfasts that kept their armies at home. Deepwood Motte, White Harbor and Greywater Watch are under seige, and they beg for aid. The dead are getting stronger before striking at Winterfell.
Episode 3 - The Long Night - Here's where we start to diverge obviously.
- A war council is held. Jon insists that they send aid to the Glovers, Manderlys and Reeds, and Dany agrees, the dead are already powerful enough, adding more troops will make things much more difficult. Sansa dissents, Winterfell's defense should be their priority. Sansa is rightfully overruled.
- At this council Varys points out that the sun has not risen, but should have. It's obvious that the Long Night has fallen. This is a real period of prolonged darkness now and not just a statement of how the battle would just never end.
- Meanwhile in King's Landing, Cersei is more obviously pregnant. This beat goes nowhere in the show currently, but it should be used to both make Cersei a more sympathetic character, and also to show the passage of time. Cersei throws a tourney to celebrate the conception and also announces her engagement to Euron who she publicly acknowledges as the father. At this tourney we see Homeless Harry Strickland fight, and he's good at it. This guy needs to be more involved.
- After the armies leave Winterfell Sansa again meets with Tyrion, this should be a repeating theme. She is trying to both gauge how deep his loyalty to Dany is and turn him more obviously to her side.
- In Winterfell the night that will never end is sapping everyone's morale. The smallfolk are beginning to despair.
- Dany takes Drogon and the Dothraki to Deepwood Motte, she wins a resounding victory there and Lord Glover bends the knee to her directly swearing himself to her in perpetuity. Dany needs to have victories interspersed with defeats this season instead of constantly getting her teeth kicked in. Also a northern house sword directly to her will lend more credence to Sansa's mistrust and dislike of Dany.
- Davos and Jaime take the Northmen and Valemen to White Harbor, and they are routed. They take heavy losses and return to Winterfell with a small band of survivors. The slaughter of the Northmen and Valemen again lends credence to Sansa's dislike of Dany.
- Jon and Arya take Rhaegal and the Wildlings to Greywater. There Jon on Rhaegal fights the Night King on Viserion. Jon manages to knock the Night King from the dragon and they resume their battle on the ground while Viserion fights Rhaegal in the sky, riderless. Jon strikes a blow that should be mortal to the Night King, but isn't. Arya see this. This establishes that it will be more difficult to kill the Night King than other White Walkers, and it doesn't just come out of nowhere.
Episode 4 - The Night is Dark...
- Jon and Arya return to Winterfell, they took heavy losses, the most significant being that Rhaegal is injured. Also with them are Meera Reed and a group of crannogmen.
- Sansa asks after Lord Howland, Bran interjects coldly that he's dead, and this leads to a confrontation with Meera. No real purpose to this except to highlight once again Bran's disdain for human life and loss.
- The situation at Winterfell continues to deteriorate as the Long Night stretches onward, and the losses at White Harbor weigh heavily on the Northerners. Resentment is brewing as the dragons were sent to the other locations which fared better.
- War council. Here's where cracks begin to obviously show in our alliance. Sansa is angry with Jon and Dany for sending the Northerners to their deaths. Dany is angry at Jon for attacking the Night King on his own and getting Rhaegal injured. Lord Glover who is at this council is staunchly in Dany's camp, this distresses Sansa.
- Meanwhile Arya meets Bran in the godswood. She tells him about Jon's duel with the Night King. Bran does his Bran thing, and tells Arya about how the Night King was created. How he has a piece of dragonglass where his heart should be. Bran asks Arya "Do you remember where the heart is?" calling back to her conversation with the Hound.
- Jon meets with Gendry and shows him Longclaw. After his battle with the Night King the blade has developed a crack. Gendry is distressed at anything that could cause this kind of damage to Valyrian steel. He says he'll do his best to reforge it.
- In King's Landing a very pregnant Cersei plans to wed Euron. Euron mentions that he thought she wanted to wait until the war was over. She tells him that their child cannot be a bastard, and that it needs to be done soon. The wedding is understated for once and done in the Red Keep, this is not a celebration for Cersei, it is a necessity.
- Melisandre arrives at Winterfell. She has seen in the flames that the War for the Dawn is coming. Davos vehemently argues for her execution. She tells them there is no need, this battle will be her last, and they need her to survive.
Episode 5 - ...And Full of Terrors. - This is our Battle for Winterfell episode, it plots out mostly the same as the actual episode 3 with the following changes.
- More relevant deaths should happen. I would have Brienne die here, her story came full circle when she was knighted by Jaime, to have her survive just to fuck Jaime in the next episode is just meaningless fan service. I would also have Sam die, his story also ended when he told Jon his heritage.
- Meera Reed and the crannogmen are stationed in the godswood with Bran and Theon. Meera is obviously angry with Bran and Bran has a talk with Meera before the battle, about how he's sorry about her father and he wishes he could tell her in a better way. It's just as dispassionate as everything Bran says but Meera can tell he's trying. She looks at him sadly before fading into the trees.
- There's more of a battle in the godswood, the crannogmen attack from the shadows, killing the White Walkers and wights. Meera strikes her frog spear (now tipped with dragonglass), into the Night King's leg, hobbling him. He kills her as Bran looks on dispassionately. Theon also wounds the Night King (preferably in the same leg) before falling. (The way it is the Night King goes from full victory formation to utter defeat instantly, it needs to have more ebb and flow IMO)
- Jon reaches the godswood and engages in a duel with the Night King. Jon appears to be winning until the Night King strikes a crushing blow and Longclaw shatters as Jon attempts to block it.
- As the Night King prepares to kill Jon, Arya arrives (this makes sense now because everyone in the godswood is dead/fallen except Bran, Jon and the Night King himself), she leaps at the Night King and he grabs her just like before. Jon takes the shattered hilt of Longclaw and stabs it into the Night King's leg where Meera/Theon had wounded him before, his leg shatters and he drops Arya. Arya swiftly stabs the Night King directly in the heart with the catspaw dagger, and ends the battle.
Episode 6 - The Last of the Starks - I liked a good deal of this episode too, so I won't be changing too much.
- In addition to the Dany/Jorah, Sansa/Theon, and Arya/Beric sequences at the mass cremation we have one with Jaime/Brienne where he takes Oathkeeper from her, and one with Jon/Sam where he puts a dragonglass dagger on his pyre with him. We also see a dead Meera Reed on a pyre, but Bran does not react.
- Jaime is obviously distraught at the loss of Brienne at the celebration feast later, Tyrion attempts to comfort him but he's having none of it. Tyrion tells Jaime that a raven arrived bringing news of Cersei's wedding.
- Jaime prepares to leave Winterfell, Tyrion asks him where he's going and we get a replay of Brienne and Jaime's leaving Winterfell scene, but with Tyrion and Jaime. We see that Jaime has left Widow's Wail and Oathkeeper behind at the smithy.
- Dany and Jon have their meeting and she again proposes marriage. He says he can't, she's his aunt. She tells him that dragon has wed dragon for generations. If they had grown up together in the Red Keep, Rhaegar and her father might well have betrothed them to each other. He tells her his family won't understand that, and she tells him that she is his family and maybe repeats Jaime's line about "By what right does the wolf judge the [dragon]?" He balks again, and she says if he will not marry her, to at least not tell his family. This sets up a more pointed Stark/Targaryen faceoff.
- Jon meets Sansa and Arya in the godswood and they present him with a reforged Ice that Gendry made from Widow's Wail and Oathkeeper. He says he can't take father's sword cause he isn't a Stark, Sansa tells him that he is a Stark, and that Ned would want it this way. Arya points out practically that he needs a new sword after Longclaw shattered, and that he's the only one of them that can wield it. The scene then plays out like it usually does.
- As Jon prepares to leave Winterfell we see him still carrying Ice, this subtly points out that his ultimate loyalty is to the Starks (in addition to him going South on horse and not on Rhaegal)
- On ship, Tyrion reluctantly informs Dany that the castle at Dragonstone is flying the Lion of Lannister. In anger she takes to the sky on Drogon to take the castle back, Tyrion and Varys try to persuade her not to. Dany arrives at Dragonstone to find the castle empty again and no resistance, she looks back to the sea and sees the Iron Fleet kill an obviously still injured Rhaegal and begin their assault on the ships.
- The rest of the episode plays out like it normally does, except when Cersei is executing Missandei she is VERY pregnant, like fit to pop. This will lend more weight to Tyrions "Think of your child" argument.
Whew. Ok that's all I can come up with now. Maybe I'll try and crank out the last 6 episodes at another time.
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8 hours ago, lucindabelle said:
Are you seriously suggesting she had no right to defend herself?
explain to me why what Mirri did to DANY isn’t as deceptive and evil. she ALSO uses justification for what is very cruel. I get that you and others are on her side but that doesn’t change the fact that Mirri does these horrible things to someone who trusted her because she feels justified.
Well have to agree to disagree because I don’t consider myself to be evil at all but if I had JUST escaped from being bound in chains forever and came across the person who did it I’d have no qualms about sentencing them to an awful death.
No. I'm suggesting that she has a proclivity towards violence and cruelty. Her first instinct every time is Fire and Blood. There's no rehabilitation, there's no mercy, there's no even sense of decency. She goes Fire and Blood every time.
What Mirri did to Dany was deceptive and evil and cruel. That doesn't excuse what Dany did as heroic, right or just. At what point does doing what the monsters do turn us into monsters ourselves?
I don't doubt that I would probably also want vengeance if someone attacked me or mine directly, it's a very human response to betrayal, that's why we can relate to Dany. If given ultimate power, and a reason to use it in a cruel manner to harm those who harmed us what would we do?
But with Dany specifically at what point do the slights against her stop warranting that kind of response? Is it when she begins punishing random masters with no evidence in an effort to stop the terrorist attacks? Is it when she executes the Tarlys for failing to immediately recognize her god given right to be their overlord? Is it when she slaughters the Kings Landers for failing to love her? I think we can all agree that the last instance is entirely unwarranted.
I'd argue that her first offense breeds those others, that violence in the world begets violence in the heart, and doing those things once, when they feel warranted makes it easier to do them later when they are clearly not.
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7 minutes ago, lucindabelle said:
Doreah andXaro has conspired to have Dany chained forever in the house of the undying.
all she did was turnabout and it seemed merited. Cruel but merited.
In my opinion, violent, cruel people, are going to use that excuse to do what they want.
"You did that or were going to do that to me, so it's just/right if I do it to you."
You don't see Jon do these things. He doesn't say that Olly stabbed him to death and he therefore has a right to stab Olly to death.
Dany is a cruel person who commits cruel acts. She justifies them, no doubt.
"She killed my baby and my husband"
"They stole my dragons and were going to lock me up forever"
"They are slavers who crucified children"
"I'm doing it to keep the peace"
"They would not bend the knee"
"Let it be fear."
The excuses get thinner and thinner until they are practically non existent. Because Dany herself is a cruel person. She chooses to act violently, she chooses to act cruelly because she wants to. This is where the show failed IMO, they should have had more of these executions that were difficult to justify, but it seems they leaped right to "Let it be fear" and it was too big a leap.
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1 hour ago, ShellsandCheese said:
The show has never showed Dany enjoying killing me. At most, she’s indifferent.
She doesn't cackle in glee no, but she tells Mirri that she will hear her screams, she locks Xaro and Doreah in a vault as they beg for mercy.
She is doing these things because she wants to. She could easily execute them in a cleaner manner, if she really wants to send a message to others who may betray her she could do it publicly with a lot of ceremony. But instead she goes for the cruelest approach.
A lot of people are willing to hand wave this type of behavior because of who Dany is doing it to, what we should be asking is why does she feel the need to execute people in the harshest possible manner?
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1 hour ago, rmontro said:
She turned Dany's husband into a vegetable and killed her unborn child. There's a lot of difference between that and killing innocents. She has always been ruthless with her enemies, and we've been shown that the failure to do so will cost you in this world.
There's a difference between being ruthless and being cruel though. There's a difference between beheading someone, or hanging them and letting them burn alive.
Jon is pretty ruthless with his own enemies, anyone who deliberately acts against him ends up dead. He hangs a child for gods sake. But what he doesn't do is stab Olly to death because that's what happened to him.
I very rarely have issues with the people Dany chooses to execute (beyond when she rounds up people and "lets the dragons decide" cause that's crazy for cocoa puffs.) Most of the time the people she chooses to kill have it coming, or at least are granted a choice. But the ways she goes about it are needlessly cruel. She burns people alive, she locks them in windowless vaults, she crucifies them, she feeds them to literal monsters.
Sure a couple other people do comparable things. Sansa feeds Ramsay to his hounds and clearly enjoys it. But she doesn't do it everytime, she probably could've justified torturing Littlefinger, he fomented distrust in her own House, and led to the killings of her father, mother and aunt. But she didn't, she had his throat cut and was done with it.
Dany does it again and again and again. And the only reason why that I can find is that she enjoys it. How many times has Dany killed someone painlessly? I can only think of Mossador, and he was clearly sympathetic to her cause.
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Honestly, I think the story they had was fine.
But everything happened just way too quickly. If they had spread out the War for the Dawn over 6 episodes, and then had the Last War be another 6, I think they would've had time to lay enough ground work to fix all of the issues.
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10 hours ago, rmontro said:
Nice video describing just one scene among many that shows Daenerys' generosity of spirit, which is in direct conflict with her actions at the end. There's simply no way that person committed the atrocities we saw in episode 5, and it's a shame that they ruined the character.
Speaking of the siege of Mereen, why didn't Dany unleash Drogon on the slavers forces like we saw at King's Landing? Just another contradiction.
The Meereen storyline is all about Dany's inner conflict. Part of her wants to be better, to forge a peace in Meereen through compromise and diplomacy. This is embodied in the character of Hizdahr. She acquiesces to his marriage to stop the killings in the streets, and they stop. But then she starts losing all the little things. She has to wear the clothes she finds disdainful (floppy ears for the Queen of Rabbits), and she is pushed to eat the foods she doesn't like. And then the big things start happening, she chains her dragons, she opens the fighting pits, and suddenly she is ruling a peaceful city that she doesn't like any more.
Dany is a good person with good intentions, and sometimes she's also a violent sociopath. GRRM goes to pains to try and establish this. Her coin is still flipping.
QuoteI gave you good counsel. Save your spears and swords for the Seven Kingdoms, I told you. Leave Meereen to the Meereenese and go west, I said. You would not listen.
"I had to take Meereen or see my children starve along the march." Dany could still see the trail of corpses she had left behind her crossing the Red Waste. It was not a sight she wished to see again. "I had to take Meereen to feed my people"
You took Meereen, he told her, yet still you lingered. "To be a queen."
You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros. "It is such a long way," she complained. "I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl."
No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling further behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.
"Fire and Blood," Daenerys told the swaying grass.
Obviously here Dany is like "Fuck Meereen, these people are weird and I don't like them." And a part of her psyche is obviously steering her towards a violent path. "Fire and Blood."
This is what the show fails to address, not that Dany is a good person at heart, but that she's conflicted. She could easily go either way. And that's how it should be seen, Targaryen Madness is supposed to be unpredictable. Aerys was seen as a noble king near the beginning of his reign, and only started to go more obviously mad after tragedies befell him (The Queen Rhaella had a series of miscarriages and stillbirths, the Prince Jaehaerys dies in infancy, and finally his abduction in the Defiance of Duskendale was the final straw.) Is it that hard to see this happening to Dany? She loses her husband, she loses her unborn child, she loses her city (I'm still convinced Meereen should be left in shambles when Dany leaves, not in the hands of Daario, it would've been much more impactful for us to see her abandoning the city to ruin), she loses her dragons, she loses her friends, she loses her second love. Is it any wonder she went mad?
Unfortunately the show occupies a lot of the beginning with her good attributes and crams all her less then noble ones into the last couple seasons. The show forgets that we can't see Dany's thoughts, and that inner monologue is a tool that Martin can use to make us more accepting of her turn when it comes in the books (and I do believe it's coming.)
But in the show it's a jarring effect and a lot of people can't accept the heel turn. If Dany's darker moments had been given more weight, then perhaps people would be a more willing to see her as a possible villain.
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13 minutes ago, MarySNJ said:
I recall that in season 1 Varys was conspiring with Illyrio to bring Viserys with Drogo’s khalisar over to Westeros. Viserys. And a Dothraki hoard. Apparently, his concern for Targaryen madness only applies to Daenerys because Viserys was more of a loose cannon and sppeared closer to madness, but Varys thought he would be A-okay as a King as compared to Robert.
Also, as I recall, Varys is the one who when convening with Elyria Sand and Lady Olenna actually says the words “fire and blood” in relation to Daenerys not as a warning but as a promise.
So when did he decide that fire and blood is bad and Daenerys must be stopped even if he had to poison her?
This is the issue when the show tries to streamline storylines.
In the books Varys was never behind Viserys or Daenerys, he was merely using them both to raise a better army for Young Griff/Aegon
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10 minutes ago, Affogato said:
I’m half convinced the WW swirl pattern will show up at some point. Raven from tormund and ghost. MAybe Jon will warg. But yes a place to make criminals and excess sons is useful.
Raven from Ghost?
"Bark, bark bark bark
Signed, Pawprint."
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24 minutes ago, screamin said:
Officially, the child of the widowed unremarried queen is a bastard, not a Lannister (however thoroughly genetically Lannister on both sides it is). Of course, Cersei had no legitimate claim to rule after Tommen "Baratheon" died, yet there she was - presumably out of sheer terror. It might be hard for her to summon that up again, though.
Yup. This is why Cersei tried to convince Euron it was his child. Remember at this point she's probably assumed Jaime is never coming back, either Bronn will kill him, or he'll remain in the North.
If she had won the battle she would've married Euron before the child's birth to legitimize her 4th child with Jaime and that child would've had a claim to Casterly Rock, The Iron Islands and the Iron Throne.
25 minutes ago, stagmania said:All of this is spot on. The way they've set it up, Dany has snapped and decided to rule through fear. That means all her enemies, anyone who has ever disagreed with her, should be dragon roasted immediately after the battle. But we know that's not what happens - she has a scene with Jon where they chat, she locks Tyrion up even though she just tried that with his brother who was able to escape. She gives them the chance to keep plotting against her and ultimately kill her, against all logic and reason. They can't even write this horrible turn in her character properly.
I don't think it's super out of character for her to not kill Jon immediately. Maybe in that chat she sends him North to deal with Sansa, and she figures, if he does what I say he'll bring Sansa to King's Landing, then I'll either force her to bend the knee, or I'll kill her (and them if I still want to I can kill him too.) and if he betrays me again I'll take my dragon North and burn Winterfell to the ground.
Remember that Aerys didn't kill Brandon Stark immediately either. He used Brandon to lure Lord Rickard to King's Landing, and then he killed both of them.
After taking King's Landing pretty much by herself, Dany has gotta feel pretty invincible right now. I doubt she sees Jon as too big of a threat right now if she's willing to kill him, so she doesn't need to rush to kill him.
I don't understand why she'd lock up Tyrion and not just outright kill him though.
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39 minutes ago, bijoux said:
I was actually thinking about this yesterday and what if it isn’t any higher emotion but the fact that Tyrion has become impotent? He found out his last sexual partner was boinking his evil dad and then strangled her. That could have caused a psychological problem.
He did get a lot stupider when he stopped fucking whores.
Would Tyrion be smart again if he just got laid? Is his actual problem severe blue balls?
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Just now, Raachel2008 said:
But it sill doesn't answer WHY.
This is the problem with introducing this kind of power into the narrative. If Bran is all knowing and all seeing and without desires, why does he do anything? Could we even understand if he tried to explain it to us?
Bran is essentially god in this story, and you are asking "why does god allow bad things to happen to good people?"
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21 minutes ago, screamin said:
Yep - and he repeatedly says to multiple people that he doesn't want to be lord of ANYTHING, which by the laws of the GoT universe means that he will immediately rocket to the top of the lists of everyone deciding who they want to rule them. Never mind that he has all the charisma of a spoiling codfish, and has conspicuously failed to give timely warnings of horrible events when he is known to be capable of giving those warnings and could easily have saved many lives by doing so (imagine, for example, how much better the NW would have fared if Bran had ordered a raven sent warning them that the NK was fishing up a dragon while it was still happening).
Seriously, the only way Bran makes any sense in this world where D&D have given him this kind of essentially limitless power is if he is truly playing some kind of long game and orchestrating everything towards his end goal.
"Sometimes, when I try to understand a person's motives I play a little game. I assume the worst. What's the worst reason they could possibly have for saying [or not saying] what they say and doing what they do? Then I ask myself 'How well does that reason explain what they say and what they do?' So tell me, what's the worst thing he could want?"
Now let's be clear, I don't think D&D are this smart. But it would explain mostly everything when it comes to Bran's choices. And Varys would be proud, Bran did what he did for the good of the realm.
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1 hour ago, Portia4844 said:
The previous 3-eyed Raven hid out in a cave and gave no helpful history to anyone until Bran gets there and then he's all about sharing. If Bran is the King or on the council, I can only hope he can speak in complete sentences and someone is writing it down so history isn't lost. So far, what he shares is more like soap opera family drama. Jon needed to know who he was, Littlefinger needed to know Bran knew what he said to Ned, Jaime needed to know Bran remembered the things he did for love, and so on. Not a word about what was going on in KL or Euron. If he isn't supposed to give information that can change the outcome or prepare others with the knowledge that is available to him, what would be the point of him being King?
Clearly Bran is a genius and he's playing the game like a boss.
Let's assume Bran ends up as King in the end, and futhermore let us assume that this is his goal, that when he says he doesn't want things anymore he's a lying dick just like everyone else in the game.
What does Bran need to do to achieve his goals?
Firstly he needs to defeat the Night King. How does he go about this?
1) He helps Sansa and Arya to uncover Littlefinger's betrayals and has him executed. Now the North is no longer fighting amongst itself, it is united behind the Starks and the Starks are committed to fighting the War for the Dawn.
2) He gives Arya the catspaw dagger she needs to kill the Night King
3) He deliberately places himself in the godswood, the only place (according to word of god) where the Night King can be unmade.
4) He gives everyone as little information as possible, resulting in victory, but a victory with the absolute highest death count possible, which is important for the next phase. He also doesn't inform anyone what Cersei is doing in the south, again to make the death toll the highest.
Secondly he needs to be put on the throne, which means he needs to eliminate any other contenders. Major contenders here (at the time Bran returns to Winterfell) are Littlefinger, Cersei, Sansa, and Daenerys, Jon also becomes a contender once Sam clues Bran into his heritage. So what does Bran do?
1) He reminds Sansa that only pain occurs when you play the game, by reminding her of her wedding night with Ramsay, making her crave security. This may seem counter-intuitive since Sansa's terror occurred in Winterfell itself, but he must know that Winterfell makes Sansa feel strong. She wants to remain there and is no longer a contender for the Iron Throne of Westeros. If he has to cede the North to her fine, he's her brother and moreso he SEES EVERYTHING and can probably trust her to not want to outright kill him.
2) He orchestrates Littlefinger's death. Eliminated.
3) He insists that Sam reveal Jon's heritage to him. And he INSISTS that it be done before the battle. Any sane person would wait until after the battle. But Bran insists that Jon know NOW because he knows Jon will tell Dany and that'll put more stress on her and their relationship.
4) Bran knows that Dany is going to burn King's Landing, he has the vision right before he leaves the cave of the 3ER, but he deliberately tells no one, so this vision will come true and Dany will be villainized and moreso every army in the kingdoms will be devestated.
Bran has now created a scenario where Dany sits the Iron Throne, but far weaker then she has ever been, with advisers who don't trust or believe in her, and another contender who doesn't want to be king, and if he kills Dany will want to be king even less. And every army is crippled and war weary.
All hail Brandon of the House Stark, first of his name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
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39 minutes ago, jeansheridan said:
On the season opener my friend noticed immediately that Dany was way too smug rolling into Winterfell. Not necessarily a sign of madness but her inability to read the room so to speak, to put her smug gameface on, was noticeable to her. I personally found Sansa to be way too smug & chilly as well. Which is why I was bummed we never saw Arya chatting Dany up. I mean, dragons! How can Arya not want to know everything about them? And in turn Dany gets Jon stories from a beloved little sister.
Season 1 Arya definitely would do this. She'd probably become Dany's best friend. She's a badass warrior Queen who flies dragons and doesn't take shit from no one. Season 1 Arya would have been all over that shit. She may also have been a bit jealous of her relationship with Jon as well, but I still think they would've gotten on well.
Season 8 Arya doesn't trust her. She's met super cool people and they have let her down again and again. Arya knows that just because you are a badass group of vigilantes led by a man who cannot die, fighting injustice done by Queen Cersei doesn't mean you can be trusted, just like a badass group of face changing assassins can't be trusted. And the same goes for badass warrior Queens.
For that matter though I think Season 1 Sansa would've gotten on well with Dany as well.
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8 minutes ago, jeansheridan said:
Dragonstone has always bugged me. Stannis fled back there after his defeat but Tywin didn't pursue? Stannis also left it entirely when he went North, leaving the whole castle and island undefended? Why didn't Cercei move on in? It's this massive fortress and presumably valuable for defense.
I so wish Rhaegel had just been severely wounded (too wounded for an immediate battle). That dragon had a crap life, poor baby.
Oh it's baffling how little worth it's given in the show.
In the books Dragonstone is a hugely important tactical location. Hold Dragonstone and you hold the Narrow Sea, you can blockade King's Landing from the sea, you can launch naval attacks to the Stormlands, Dorne, Vale and even the North. It's so important that as soon as Stannis leaves, Cersei's first action is to blockade the island and try to take it back.
There's a reason why House Targaryen didn't cede the seat after they became Kings, beyond ancestral reasons, Dragonstone is too important to the defense of King's Landing to trust any but the heir to the throne with it.
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7 minutes ago, AuntieMame said:
The only problem with Drogon being so effective in King's Landing is that it makes you wonder why the other two dragons were ineffective during other battles and seemed easy to kill. One day the Iron Fleet is successful in a ridiculously transparent ambush and kills a dragon easily; the next battle and the Iron Fleet is easily beaten and with one less dragon. None of it makes any sense.
Something should be said for being prepared.
Dany was returning to Dragonstone with Drogon and Rhaegal, she didn't expect to be ambushed (that's what makes it an ambush), and was flying a slow meandering course back home in order to plot the downfall of Cersei. Was this stupid of her? Most definitely, any reasonable person would have expected Cersei to be planning an ambush when she vacated Dragonstone. But if you take into account that she was ambushed it makes the success of the attack make much more sense.
In Star Wars they talk about accelerating to "Attack Speed" because obviously the faster you are going the more difficult it is to hit you. A healthy Drogon flying at top speed and attacking from cloud cover and using the sun to obscure people's vision, and wheeling and changing course on a dime is obviously going to be more difficult to hit then a wounded Rhaegal just trying to get home to Dragonstone to rest. The Scorpions are definitely powerful, and should be respected, but a prepared Dany exposed their weaknesses mainly being they take a lot of time to change where they are aiming and a lot of time to reload.
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15 minutes ago, Constantinople said:
I'm not confident that Dorne would rally to the living embodiment of Rhaegar Targaryen's contemptuous treatment of his wife, Princess Elia of Dorne (or non-wife due to the annullment)
But with D&D, anything can happen.
Well in the show the Martells are all dead, the new Prince of Dorne is not a Martell and probably from one of the other high houses. It's difficult to posit how strongly someone from House Dayne or House Yronwood would hold to a grudge for the now extinct House Martell.
The Yronwoods from the books might hold close ties to House Martell because of their connection to Quentyn, but there is no Quentyn in the show.
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11 minutes ago, rmontro said:
Didn't Tolkien have Aragorn turn evil at the end and burn down Minas Tirith? What, you mean he didn't? I wonder if we were given the Aragorn turns evil ending if anyone would have even heard of Lord of the Rings? Tolkien at least had the good sense to not try and pass that garbage off on to his readers.
No he had Frodo turn evil at the end.
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18 minutes ago, Tryangle said:
On first watch he looked quite a bit like Meryn Trant... which I guess would be apropos considering he wasn't above a bit of abusing young women.
How weird was it that they introduced that Strickland fella as the head of the Golden Company, he's pretty much a non-entity for several episodes, and in his 'major moment', turns into a craven and is unceremoniously dispatched.
It's another example of the show trying to take something from the books cause it was cool and ruining it be taking out all the cool stuff.
The Golden Company has this whole rich history where they are secret Targaryen betrayers and then secret Targaryen loyalists. There is no way they would take a contract to fight Daenerys on behalf of Cersei. So the show had to pretty much neuter them.
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1 hour ago, GraceK said:
So, after watching it again, I came to my own personal conclusion. You can feel free to disagree of course. I will always love her, and I am personally heartbroken. Many people have been saying this was her endgame for years and I have been staunchly defending her, and you know what? I have no regrets. I may have been wrong, but I feel she was gaslighted and pushed into this. It didn’t have to be this way. Watching a woman genuinely try to do good, save so many people , come North and put her life on the line to help save the world, she’s a hero. For two seasons we watched her listen to everything her advisors said with the exception of the Tarleys, and this sudden narrative that she’s insane isn’t worthy. She has one feast where she feels isolated and depressed because her friend died and she’s insecure and Varys immediately plots against her . Jon Snow, the man she loves offers her no comfort, just platitudes of “ my queen’” , her best friend dies, her child dies...anyway, her descent into madness is a self fulfilling prophecy that could have been avoided. But I digress!
That moment on Drogon, when the bells rang for surrender, and she almost started to cry, and she’s looking at the red keep, I feel like what made her lose it was this pent up rage. She won so easily. This shit could have been over years ago. And she realizes this. She realizes how much she has lost, and suffered, in pursuit of gaining back her family seat, and it was so easy to get it! And she’s enraged . It’s not enough anymore, they have to suffer like she has suffered. These people don’t even want her there, and she saved them, and she lost so much saving them, and they despise her and rather have Jon. And she’s like, fuck it. And she just loses it. It’s terrible but I almost understand it. And Emilia really killed it. She really has been killing it this season.
I agree pretty much.
The other thing is that Dany was being sold a false bill of goods all the way through. At the very beginning she was being fed stories by Viserys about how the commons were saying secret prayers for the return of the Targs and sewing dragon banners, and secretly hated the usurpers. And despite Jorah telling her that "the common people pray for rain, health and a summer that never ends, they don't care what games the high lords play," I think a part of her believed that, and that belief was only reinforced with how relatively easy it was to win the adoration of the former slaves in Slavers Bay.
Sure she could play off the coldness of the Northerners. They have always been a frosty group (all those puns intended) and Jon even warned her that they don't take kindly to outsiders.
But I think a part of her expected the commons in King's Landing, the city her ancestor built, to see the dragon above the city and turn on the Lannisters, and instead they went to the Lannisters for protection. It was just another reinforcement that she will not find love here, only fear.
33 minutes ago, GraceK said:anyone else see a Anakin Skywalker comparison? Slightly?
Anakin definitely has aspects of Dany. He's been told he's special, and he may the most powerful person in the galaxy and that breeds entitlement in him, and he's got that same simmering anger inside.
But Anakin was essentially betrayed by the tenets of the Jedi, not the Jedi themselves. They told him that attachments were wrong, that emotions were wrong, that love was wrong. And when he got those things and liked them, he felt ashamed of them, and isolated himself. That made him vulnerable to corruption. The tragedy of the Jedi is that if they had told Anakin that it's ok to talk about your feelings (and have feelings) instead of burying them deep he may have gone to them for aid instead of the Emperor.
Conversely Dany doesn't feel like any of those things are wrong, and seeks them out actively. She wants to feel a connection to her homeland, the admiration of her advisors, the love of her people and the love of Jon. But she doesn't get those, not because they are wrong (well, Jon might feel that his love for Dany is wrong, but Dany doesn't so it's a moot point,) but because no one will give them to her, and when someone does, they die.
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44 minutes ago, YaddaYadda said:
This has been pretty much debunked by Ran over at westeros.org yesterday.
It didn't seem very plausible.
It would've been pretty funny though that GRRM was just waiting for D&D to flub their shot before dunking all over them.
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8 hours ago, Umbelina said:
Wow, I really have forgotten the books if Tyrion and Jaime still don't love each other.
Other than that incident, Jaime was the only person in his family who had always been very kind to him.
You mean the incident where the person he loved, and who genuinely loved him back was gang raped, and then he was coerced into raping her himself? That incident?
Yeah, Tyrion hates his whole family in the books (justifiably), but it's not that simple. He's a conflicted character. The most telling moment is in ADwD, Tyrion has a dream where he's a two headed giant fighting in a Westerosi battle with Barristan the Bold (who is still alive in the books) and Bittersteel (founder of the Golden Company) for allies, obviously he's fighting for Dany here (or possibly Aegon.) His father leads the enemy army and Tyrion kills him, then Tyrion hacks at Jaime's face until it's a ruin. One of his heads laughs as he slaughters his brother, and the other one weeps.
He wants to love and forgive his brother for the kindnesses he's done for him. He hates him for the cruelties he's done to him and he can't get over either.
Here's the thing though, Jaime isn't a good brother, he doesn't protect Tyrion from Cersei or their father, and when one of them presses him he goes along with their cruelties. Tyrion is just so emotionally abused by everyone else that he latches onto Jaime for the small kindnesses he does for him.
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6 hours ago, jeansheridan said:
He is much more angry and sour in the books. He is not super kind to Sansa when they marry, he is furious with Jaime for what happened to his wife. Killing Shae is a much more angry moment versus hurt. He's just tougher and meaner.
But if he is a secret Targaryens and Dany tried to burn him....She has burned so many people. How interesting would it be if she can't burn him?.
Targaryens aren't immune to fire. It's just Dany. And in the books it's just Dany at the specific moment she hatches the dragons and never again.
6 hours ago, Oscirus said:Tyrion threw his best friend under the bus to throw in his lot with the queen. People think he was trying to save his brother and cersei when he saved Jaime when he was actually trying to save the city that hate him so. If there's anybody who's a tragic character it's tyrion cuz if he doesn't help her out of Mereen, none of these events ever happen.
I think this is another "it doesn't have to be one or the other" type thing.
Tyrion is never really the type to accept something, he'll request trial by battle when he has no champion, he'll set the harbor ablaze to save the city. He's the Capt Kirk of this story and he tried once again to Kobayashi Maru this situation.
"Look, you can either save your brother, or you can try to save the city."
5 hours ago, bijoux said:Does anyone have any clue as to who Varys was writing to in the beginning? It didn't even play a role in his death sentence so it feels like a weird dangling thread.
They were letters proclaiming Jon the rightful heir to the Iron Throne.
Parts I could make out
"...is not the only Targaryen left...."
"...Rhaegar and Lyanna..."
"...Their son lives still, hidden by Eddard Stark, his name is..."
"...he is the true heir to the Iron Throne"
He had a bunch of already rolled scrolls beside him too, so I assume he was sending them to multiple people. Probably all the high lords in the land (Robin Arryn, New Prince of Dorne, whoever is ruling the Reach etc.) and maybe a few others.
Presumably if Jon had accepted his overture and decided to press his claim Varys would have sent them out. Or maybe he was already sending them out and that'll bear fruit in the final episode?
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Game Over: How YOU Would Have Done Season 8
in Game Of Thrones
Agreed, but if that's the case they shouldn't be mentioned at all.
If you draw attention to something, it should be significant, or atleast should appear. Cersei asking about elephants means we should see elephants.