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Game Of Thrones In The Media


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On 8/16/2019 at 9:40 AM, Billina said:

I love Lindsay Ellis.  As soon as I saw that she was covering Game of Thrones, I squealed.

Also, yeah, she is spot-on with her observations.  The whole video is cathartic.

"When she reveals that she's SuperHitler, the Hitler that flies!" 😆

Edited by Brn2bwild
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15 hours ago, Billina said:

Also, yeah, she is spot-on with her observations.  The whole video is cathartic.

It was kind of weird that she neglected to mention Arya and Bran. She mentioned freaking Bronn who barely had any screen time. I wanted her take on those two characters too. I was also waiting the whole video for her to talk about the very ending of the show but she didn't (I really wanted her take on it).

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I think she could easily make a third one and maybe she planned to, but doesn't have the energy for it, which I  wholly support. Thinking about the show is exhausting at this point when it used to be fun. (She's right in her observation that people let a lot of things fly cause everything looked really cool and they were sure the pay-off would be awesome)

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1 hour ago, Azi said:

(She's right in her observation that people let a lot of things fly cause everything looked really cool and they were sure the pay-off would be awesome)

Actually a lot of people where complaining since the early Seasons (and not just book snobs) but were drowned out by all the 'shut up this is awesome, you don't know good tv' crowd. The same people who used to be that way, telling complainers to shut it, are the same ones who now complain about S8. I do appreciate irony...

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2 hours ago, Smad said:

Actually a lot of people where complaining since the early Seasons (and not just book snobs) but were drowned out by all the 'shut up this is awesome, you don't know good tv' crowd. The same people who used to be that way, telling complainers to shut it, are the same ones who now complain about S8. I do appreciate irony...

As do I. I wonder what could possibly have changed between season one and season eight?

Edited by merrick715
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10 hours ago, Azi said:

The fandom is/was really really big, so one doesn't really preclude the other? 

It's hypocrisy. And I'm not a fan of hypocrites. The red flags concerning D&D have been there since the beginning. Their sexism/misogyny, racism, dudebro mentality, treatment of homosexuality etc.. The only reason why people overlooked those things is because as long as D&D were (badly) using the books, they could fake it enough to fool a lot of people. Even the later Seasons were defended by most people and everyone criticizing them was labeled 'book snob'. And as long as their fave characters still got their 'badass' moments, they didn't care. But then in S8 they are complaining because now even their fave characters are getting crapped on so suddenly this show and D&D suck.

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2 hours ago, Smad said:

It's hypocrisy. And I'm not a fan of hypocrites. The red flags concerning D&D have been there since the beginning. Their sexism/misogyny, racism, dudebro mentality, treatment of homosexuality etc.. The only reason why people overlooked those things is because as long as D&D were (badly) using the books, they could fake it enough to fool a lot of people. Even the later Seasons were defended by most people and everyone criticizing them was labeled 'book snob'. And as long as their fave characters still got their 'badass' moments, they didn't care. But then in S8 they are complaining because now even their fave characters are getting crapped on so suddenly this show and D&D suck.

This perfectly describes my entire experience with this fandom, including regular fellow viewers and journalists who wrote about the show. Criticism about the bigotry in the show was waved off or disparaged by people whose favorite characters directly benefited from the crappy writing. So it was interesting (read: schadenfreude-licious) to see their reactions during the final season when their faves were suddenly the ones getting the shoddy writing treatment.

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 Bad show written by bad writers who are also bad people. Sigh.

It's like people talk about some sort of collective torture and not entertainment that was made to entertain you. The moment it didn't do that for you you should stop watching. 

If ratings failed things would have been changed. But ratings went up and no one should change the winning formula. You don't change winning team.

So just like how those who supported Daenerys were accomplice in her crimes, those who are disappointed with the ending can blame only themselves, because they gave Benioff and Weiss that power. Because apparently this show was bad for 4 or 5 seasons. Maybe even since the beginning. And yet  everyone watched and cheered for it. And Benioff and Weiss became more powerful and more sure that they are Good and Right. 

And now they have their deals with Netflix and Lucasfilm. We will never be free of them. So sad.

Edited by nikma
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I finished the show like I finish a book, to see how it ends. And just because a show isn’t entertaining me in one particular episode doesn’t mean I don’t have hope for it to get better. I am also stuck watching scenes of characters I don’t like so I can follow the story. It kind of sucks. 

And people are allowed to enjoy their hatewatch. I just want people to acknowledge it’s a hatewatch if that’s what they are doing. 

Of note, I hated Sansa and Arya equally from the pilot forward. I hated Dany beginning in S2 and all the way up to S8E5 when her arc came to its clearly plotted and inevitable conclusion. It just took too long. 

Jon is...mediocre. Too much of a low-rent Jesus character.

I watched for the Lannisters.

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Even I, as a person who did not call for D&D's head after the finale, was filled with rage after reading that twitter thread. How the FUCK did two random dudes who had ZERO experience with TV, no writer's room, no clue about ANYTHING get to create this show for HBO? HOW DID THEY GET A MEETING WITH GRRM? Meanwhile women and people of color are killing themselves to even get anything pitched or written? Maybe I should be directing more rage at HBO than David and Dan for this, but GOOD LORD THIS MAKES ME ANGRY.

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So D&D rush through the final season of Game of Thrones to start making a new Star Wars trilogy, only to ultimately abandon the project.  Never change, guys...

Edited by benteen
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On 10/28/2019 at 2:02 PM, Minneapple said:

Even I, as a person who did not call for D&D's head after the finale, was filled with rage after reading that twitter thread. How the FUCK did two random dudes who had ZERO experience with TV, no writer's room, no clue about ANYTHING get to create this show for HBO? HOW DID THEY GET A MEETING WITH GRRM? Meanwhile women and people of color are killing themselves to even get anything pitched or written? Maybe I should be directing more rage at HBO than David and Dan for this, but GOOD LORD THIS MAKES ME ANGRY.

I saw this on Twitter. Possibly very likely. 

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On 10/27/2019 at 10:49 AM, Acceleration said:

I just had to post this entire thread that explains so much about the show and the many, MANY issues that plagued the show from the very start

I read about this in a Gizmodo article last night, and I am still livid, and will likely be livid to the end of time for ruining this series with their incompetence. 

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So D&D really are just a pair of random schmucks who stumbled into this job through nepotism and dumb luck?! I just picture these guys wandering into HBO looking for the bathroom, and happening into a board meeting by accident, and leaving with a massive ass TV show. Although, them admitting that they had no clue what they were doing and the shows success was basically all on the individual actors/writers/directors/other behind the scenes people really explains a lot, especially the last few seasons. 

Its fitting that after D&D rushed through the ending of GoT to get to do Star Wars, they actually ended up being dumped by Star Wars who it turns out, shockingly, wasnt thrilled about handing the keys to the kingdom to two guys who just admitted to be utterly mediocre and not liking or wanting to do fantasy to begin with. Yeah they can all say it was just because of scheduling issues, but thats a pretty big coincidence that the give this whole interview, and then announce being dumped by Star Wars. 

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24 minutes ago, benteen said:

Game of Thrones prequel NOT going forward.

Wow, I did not expect this. Game of Thrones prequel not going forward

Why not? The concept of that prequel was always ridiculous. The Starks and direwolves? Were people really watching the show for those? The Long Night might have been marginally interesting if season 8 didn't kill off the build up to that arc so that Cersei could sip wine some more. 

Not surprisingly, the Fire & Blood based prequel is still going forward. 

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1 hour ago, benteen said:

Game of Thrones prequel NOT going forward.

Wow, I did not expect this. Game of Thrones prequel not going forward

The prequel was always going to be a ratings grab and a  cash-cow. So if they didn't pick it up, the financial return at the very least wasn't there. I don't believe a minute in "creative" reasons, not after what the crap aired this spring 🙄

The pilot might have sucked but since the end of GoT, HBO's highest-rated shows are way below 1.0, most of their offerings don't even reach 0.5 IIRC. GoT was a massive cultural phenomenon and leeching off the brand only, this spinoff should have gotten at least 2.0s for season 1; maybe 3.0s or 4.0s for the series premiere and anyway, for two or three seasons, way more than their current average.

Of course a GoT prequel had to be expensive, but financially unable to live off 2.0s for a season ? I have a hard time imagining it. Moreover, HBO Max is going to need a library.

I wonder if some concrete financial facts (lower than usual merch, DVD/Blue-ray, on-demand sales?) might have triggered or heavily contributed to that decision.

No matter how everyone involved downplayed it, the backlash for the last season was as massive as the show had become, and the network certainly did a shitload of surveys. I'd love to see the results, and their audience projections. Maybe the S8 debacle did affect the GoT brand, in the sense that there's not much of a brand left to leech off...

except for the core "bewbs and dragons"? It would made sense, then, how they're still betting on the Targaryens spinoff instead.

Edited by Happy Harpy
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2 hours ago, Katsullivan said:

The Starks and direwolves? Were people really watching the show for those?

Plenty of people were in it for the Starks (+direwolves) and other non-Targs. Might surprise some people but not everyone watched the show for the white-haired, entitled, incest crazy pyromaniacs. Just a thought...

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Good riddance.  They can cancel the other prequel too for all I care.  God, I loved these books and this world. And these two schmucks ruined all my enjoyment of it. I have no plans to re-read the books or re-watch the show. I canceled HBO at the end of the show and I have no plans to subscribe again.

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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.

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So a lot of pale characters in blond wigs?

And of course dragon effects.  OK I get dragons would be popular but does make for more expensive episodes to film.

I guess HBO decided GoT really is just swords and dragons.

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7 hours ago, Stella said:

I saw this on Twitter. Possibly very likely. 

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Oh Goddammit. So not just two random dudes then. Two random privileged wealthy white dudes.

People are also raging about the "taking fantasy out of the show" part of D&D's interview, but ironically that may have been what made GoT such a mainstream success. Normally genre shows are not a big deal outside of sci-fi fans, plus they don't get noticed at the big awards shows. I keep thinking of Buffy, how creative Joss was with his storytelling, how he truly tried to understand and do different things with the medium of television. Then there's this bag of dicks who are basically bored rich boys who move on when they need a new shiny toy to play with. 

I loved the Starks and direwolves and one thing that upset me about the show is how it played down the direwolves and their connection to the Stark children. But the Long Night prequel seemed pretty pointless after the Night King was killed the way he was. The big winter involved a few flurries and lasted one night. Oooo threatening. 

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6 hours ago, Smad said:

Plenty of people were in it for the Starks (+direwolves) and other non-Targs. Might surprise some people but not everyone watched the show for the white-haired, entitled, incest crazy pyromaniacs. Just a thought...

4 hours ago, Happy Harpy said:

House of the Dragon prequel ordered directly to series for HBO.

Michael Sapochnik is co-showrunner.

https://twitter.com/JamesHibberd/status/1189330514290843648

Edited by Katsullivan
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David Benioff at least had a few writing credits before GoT:

The 25th Hour was a novel that Spike Lee adapted into a movie. The movie was okay, but I've not read the novel. And City of Thieves was a novel that was also okay. Nothing special.

He also apparently had a hand in the screenplays for Troy and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and adapted The Kite Runner for the screen.

I'm sure his parents' connections opened a lot of doors for him, but his career trajectory at least suggests he may have been considered a viable option.

As far as I can tell, Weiss had done almost nothing before getting the GoT gig.

I don't think either are particularly good writers, or good showrunners, but it seems clear that they didn't apply even their talents to the final season, and were just eager to get it wrapped up and done. Talking about "sacrificing years of [their] lives" to the show seems to indicate they considered it an obligation rather than a privilege.

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3 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

I don't think either are particularly good writers, or good showrunners, but it seems clear that they didn't apply even their talents to the final season, and were just eager to get it wrapped up and done. Talking about "sacrificing years of [their] lives" to the show seems to indicate they considered it an obligation rather than a privilege.

Benioff is also responsible (screenplay) for Gemini Man, the last Will Smith flop.

I didn't change my mind on what I thought until S7: They did a great job trimming the books, getting rid of characters and plotlines that were superfluous, not hesitating to drop what didn't work from season to season, and meshing the whole into something coherent and sustainable on TV. Unfortunately, they did all the opposite during the final stretch (keeping Urine, focusing on the wrong characters or plotlines, going for "gotcha" when they should have explained etc.). When you're able to put together an episode like A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms, the problem isn't incompetence or blindness to quality. Until 8x03, the writing is flawed but afterwards, the issue is simply no-one-gives-a-fuck writing.

Just a wild personal guess: The failed pilot had D&D eat a big huge humble pie. But as the show ended its run, the success finally went to their head, they wanted the whole big credit (Sapochnik himself said they wouldn't listen to input anymore; the show didn't submit Cogman for writing, etc.) and being busy ego-tripping, they lost all perspective on what worked or not and what would satisfy the audience, or at least not piss off 90% of it. I guess they got what they wanted, in a way, with the 200 millions Netflix deal.

I don't only blame them, though. Considering his surly reaction after the finale re: the meanies on the Internet, I have not doubt this was GRRM's ending from A to Z. It might be less rushed if he ever writes it, not sure though since he has two books left, but also a shit ton of characters and plotlines that weren't on the show. However I fully expect the women + power = baaaad incel trip, as well as a nihilistic vision of the world (where every character is alone, miserable, back to their worst/square one, dead, butchered/villainized or all of the above), which were my issues with the ending, to be his definition of "bittersweet".

That's why unless they cast an actor/actress I truly love and whom I will watch in about anything, I don't think I'll be in for the prequel until I know how it ends. Fool me once.

Edited by Happy Harpy
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18 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

I don't think either are particularly good writers, or good showrunners, but it seems clear that they didn't apply even their talents to the final season, and were just eager to get it wrapped up and done. Talking about "sacrificing years of [their] lives" to the show seems to indicate they considered it an obligation rather than a privilege.

GoT was a smashing success.

Presumably HBO would have fired them if they weren't delivering.

Instead they increased the production budgets for them to oversee every year and gave them almost complete control.  Because networks will have execs who will micromanage shows if they think the show runners aren't performing.

They oversaw a production crew of hundreds, across several countries.  I'm sure they had experienced logistics and line producers do it but again, it fell on them to hire and manage and make sure the job was getting done.

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I don't know if I'll watch the Targ history show or not.  At least with that show, the writers will actually have to add more information, as the book was more of an outline, with a few extra details here and there (and pretty boring to read, imo).  completely different from the book version of ASOFAI, which was filled with details that were cut.

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What showrunners Benioff & Weiss actually said at Austin Film Festival about writing and producing Game of Throne

Though they were experienced writers before the show, David and Dan had to learn to communicate their ideas as first-time producers, as Weiss describes it: “We knew about story, we knew about character, and we knew tone, and how we wanted it all to feel, but all the rest of it we had to learn; and translate what we felt into words that would, say, lead a production designer in the direction that would produce the result we wanted.”

“With the fantasy genre on television, tonally it’s very easy [go too] campy. Every scene, you change these two lines and it’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” Weiss jokes. “Also, in terms of fantasy exposition, with proper nouns, it’s almost like a game of Jenga, where you’re trying to plow as many of them as possible without the whole thing falling over. In the first pilot, we had one too many and the whole thing fell over. Going forward, we tried to keep that stuff to a minimum, because we didn’t just want to appeal to a fantasy fanbase. We wanted them to love it, and we wanted our parents to love it, and people who play professional football to love it. We wanted to reach a wider audience, and to do that keeping the tone [under control] was very important.”

“There’s this famous Russian poet who read his poem and someone in the audience said, ‘You mind explaining the poem?’, and so he re-read the poem, and that was his response. That’s it,” Benioff said. “[A Song of Ice and Fire] is such a complex story that I don’t think we ever tried to [boil it down.] You kind of have to have a prepared answer –‘It’s about power, and family,’ and that’s all true; it is about power, it is about family. But I think it’s also true that two shows can have the same themes and be wildly different, and one’s good and one’s bad, and honestly it’s about the complexities they try to depict, it’s the characters. To try to cram it into a single aphorism isn’t helpful for me. There are other writers I know and respect who feel very differently, and operate differently, but for both of us, it’s not the way we work.”

http://watchersonthewall.com/benioff-weiss-reflect-decade-game-thrones-austin-film-festival/

Everything they said on that panel was public knowledge for years and no one cared until S8.

And this idea that the showrunners of the biggest show in history had no idea what they were doing is ridiculous. But that is expected from nerd fandoms. This reminds me of the attempts from angry fans to deny that George Lucas had anything to do with the success of Star Wars, after PT backlash. 

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that one of them having a wealthy father who was a past senior government official had anything to do with GoT being successful. Zero evidence whatsoever. What actually happened was they had serious literary chops, experience as writers, an idea for a show after they read the books, a pitch that sold GRRM and then HBO, a pilot that didn’t work precisely because of an overload of exposition and fantasy elements, and a second shot at the pilot which blew HBO away, and became an instant classic with audiences. And as we just saw with Bloodmoon (and as is often the case with TV pilots that don’t work, but where studios want the proposed show), the Bloodmoon showrunner, Jane Goldman, was given a second chance to create a second pilot. And she did. But unfortunately, it didn’t convince HBO to order a season.

This is a story of meritocracy, and it’s being twisted into a false story of overwhelming privilege and the rewarding of white male mediocrity. That’s simply not what happened. B&W fought hard and created an insanely good pilot. And then they created season after season of the most popular TV show in history. A final season that didn’t land with a lot of fans doesn’t change that fact, and doesn’t rewrite history. They were perfectly competent. People just didn’t like what they did at the conclusion, and are using that as ground to argue that they were complete and utter novices and fools from the start, who should’ve have even been given the show by HBO.It’s a character assassination  and yet people are perpetuating populist nonsense without a grounding in reality because you just don’t like the guys and what they did to your books.   Why not leave it at that, instead of launching into unsubstantiated personal attacks?

Edited by nikma
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And if turning good books into the biggest show in the world is something any idiot can do, I can't wait to see The Witcher, Wheel of Time, His Dark Materials and LOTR become smashing success. 

Edited by nikma
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21 minutes ago, nikma said:

And if turning good books into the biggest show in the world is something any idiot can do, I can't wait to see The Witcher, Wheel of Time, His Dark Materials and LOTR become smashing success. 

LOTR spawned three major blockbuster movies and loads of Oscars., plus the Hobbit series.  Can't speak for the others, but LOTR was very well done.

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On 11/15/2019 at 12:50 PM, nikma said:

This is a story of meritocracy, and it’s being twisted into a false story of overwhelming privilege and the rewarding of white male mediocrity. That’s simply not what happened. B&W fought hard and created an insanely good pilot. And then they created season after season of the most popular TV show in history. A final season that didn’t land with a lot of fans doesn’t change that fact, and doesn’t rewrite history. They were perfectly competent. People just didn’t like what they did at the conclusion, and are using that as ground to argue that they were complete and utter novices and fools from the start, who should’ve have even been given the show by HBO.It’s a character assassination  and yet people are perpetuating populist nonsense without a grounding in reality because you just don’t like the guys and what they did to your books.   Why not leave it at that, instead of launching into unsubstantiated personal attacks?

There's a difference between arguing that something is popular and arguing that it is good. Fans are pissed because they believe, rightly in my opinion, that the quality of the show began to decline greatly once they no longer had the books to lean on for character development, dialogue, detailed plot points, etc., and that the final few seasons were bad. There are also valid complaints that they added a great deal of racism and misogyny to the show. 

Meritocracy has nothing to do with this.

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On 11/28/2019 at 5:47 PM, slf said:

There are also valid complaints that they added a great deal of racism and misogyny to the show. 

That's a hell of a statement to leave hanging out there. Perhaps you should consider backing it up.

Edited by MrsR
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7 hours ago, MrsR said:

That's a hell of a statement to leave hanging out there. Perhaps you should consider backing it up.

It's not, actually, considering that those are the two most widely made and known criticisms made of the show over the better part of a decade. Perhaps you should consider doing some reading on the subject, these opinions aren't uncommon. For example, just a few posts above you there's a link to an article where Emilia Clarke discusses issues she had.

There's the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in the Mhysa scene were poc when in the book many are white, resulting in a scene where poc lift a white woman over their heads and devotedly call her "mother". The way the Martell story line was gutted and that house was reduced to a being a bunch of kinslaying traitors. Much of the show was set in a part of the world where a huge chunk of the population was poc and yet there was only one woc and one moc with a major role (both of whom ended up subservient to a white person). Compare that to the Westerosi characters. This wouldn't have been an issue if they hadn't done the Martells quite so dirty.

The rampant nudity and pointless sex scenes they added in that put the actresses on display but didn't do the same with the men (while there were some sex scenes with the men, they weren't props; the men drove the scenes they were in, they were centered, self-actualized). Several actresses on the show have spoken out about having issues, such as Emilia Clarke and Esme Bianco. The writers' obsession with humanizing the male characters, to the point of waving off some of the worst shit they did and giving them the chance to redeem themselves and flat out omitting some of the other hideous things they did in the books (Tyrion wanted to rape Cersei in revenge) but they rarely afforded the female characters the same. The awful way they twisted the story lines for the women, such as making so much of Brienne's story about redeeming Jaimie, or making Sansa's story about learning to not be such a stupid little girl (her arc in the books is about her strength in remaining kind and compassionate to others; despite what Sasa thinks, the books take the pisition that she is quite brave, intelligent, and strong); they literally had her say she wouldn't have been able to become strong without all the awful things that happened to her. That's sick and dehumanizing.

Edited by slf
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On 11/28/2019 at 11:47 PM, slf said:

Fans are pissed because they believe, rightly in my opinion, that the quality of the show began to decline greatly once they no longer had the books to lean on for character development, dialogue, detailed plot points, etc.,

And? Quality of the books began to decline greatly after ASOS. That happens in a lot of shows and books and movies. This doesn't mean D&D wanted that. 

 

 

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