Just needed to get this out there.
May. 13th, 2019 02:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rogueslayer452I stopped watching Game of Thrones years ago, like I legit just don't care for it anymore. With this being the final season, with the series finale next weekend, and hearing about the kerfuffle going down and how fandom has been reacting which has been unavoidable since it's been everywhere, I just have this to say:
The show is not the books. The show was never the books. What happens on the show is not canonical to the books.
While there have been some changes made and moments that I liked in the show and while the books themselves aren't exactly perfect and do have issues of their own, the books are 5000% better than whatever the show turned out to be. So whatever has happened so far especially in the final season, and whatever happens in the series finale, just know that the books aren't going to happen the same way (and yeah, I know that GRRM has claimed that it's the same, but he's not been entirely reliable anyway with anything relating to the last two books he hasn't even finished writing yet, so, y'know, take what he says with a grain of salt).
Adaptations are tricky things. Some can turn out to be good even if they deviate a bit from the source material, while others not so good. And unfortunately while Game of Thrones might have started out decent enough with adapting the first book with the first season, it did go downhill after that. There's been many theories as to why, but I personally think that HBO/the showrunners had a completely different agenda from the start that wasn't meant to adapt A Song Of Ice And Fire as it should have been, or at least as what I believe it should have been.
Regardless, the show is almost over. What happens will happen, and we'll just have to hope that GRRM will get on to finishing the last two books so we can see what actually occurs in the end.
And even then, the fanbase for ASOIAF has been having their own fan theories and speculations for the series marinating for so long due to the long delay between the book releases, that I'm sure that even what happens in the final two books won't please everybody and it obviously won't stop them from keeping their particular headcanons. Same with the show, I'm sure. Because that's what fandom does, that's what fandom has always done when they don't agree with canon. So even if you're disappointed or upset or just plain hate everything, just know that you're not alone and that fandom will always thrive with making fanworks and content to fill that voideven if GRRM hates it.
The show is not the books. The show was never the books. What happens on the show is not canonical to the books.
While there have been some changes made and moments that I liked in the show and while the books themselves aren't exactly perfect and do have issues of their own, the books are 5000% better than whatever the show turned out to be. So whatever has happened so far especially in the final season, and whatever happens in the series finale, just know that the books aren't going to happen the same way (and yeah, I know that GRRM has claimed that it's the same, but he's not been entirely reliable anyway with anything relating to the last two books he hasn't even finished writing yet, so, y'know, take what he says with a grain of salt).
Adaptations are tricky things. Some can turn out to be good even if they deviate a bit from the source material, while others not so good. And unfortunately while Game of Thrones might have started out decent enough with adapting the first book with the first season, it did go downhill after that. There's been many theories as to why, but I personally think that HBO/the showrunners had a completely different agenda from the start that wasn't meant to adapt A Song Of Ice And Fire as it should have been, or at least as what I believe it should have been.
Regardless, the show is almost over. What happens will happen, and we'll just have to hope that GRRM will get on to finishing the last two books so we can see what actually occurs in the end.
And even then, the fanbase for ASOIAF has been having their own fan theories and speculations for the series marinating for so long due to the long delay between the book releases, that I'm sure that even what happens in the final two books won't please everybody and it obviously won't stop them from keeping their particular headcanons. Same with the show, I'm sure. Because that's what fandom does, that's what fandom has always done when they don't agree with canon. So even if you're disappointed or upset or just plain hate everything, just know that you're not alone and that fandom will always thrive with making fanworks and content to fill that void
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Date: 2019-05-13 09:45 am (UTC)Amen. I gave up on that show in season 3. I was beyond let down. I freaking started an LJ comm before the show and everything. And now I won't watch it. Love the books though! Honestly, how can anyone call the writing good after the 'bad pussy' line?????
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Date: 2019-05-13 09:57 am (UTC)I can't believe they won an Emmy for that, like jfc that was so bad.
I mean, when the show was first nominated after the first season all those years ago it was a quite huge deal since genre television hardly ever gets recognized during these kinds of awards, so it's understandable that we should give credit where credit is due on that front. But after that? I don't think it deserved that many nominations/wins as it did throughout the years, especially in comparison to other shows that were far more deserving.
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Date: 2019-05-13 10:26 am (UTC)Season one was fab. It's when the dude bro show runners diverted with their own plots that it became a joke. Even Martin seems pissed.
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Date: 2019-05-13 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-13 10:32 am (UTC)But really, I just need to know one thing: GRRM said that the ending will be fundamentally faithful to his plan for the major characters. Henceforth this is where we are going anyway, right?
It doesn't matter. Even the most painful piece of narrative can still be appreciated if IT MAKES SENSE and if it's carefully constructed. This was none of it. This was messy, sloppy, sensationalistic writing.
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Date: 2019-05-13 11:17 am (UTC)Precisely. I think this is the main point that people are pissed about the most, and understandably so.
The biggest problem I'm finding isn't that the show decided to do its own thing, because as I mentioned shows can deviate from the source material and still be reasonably decent if they have a plan of where to go. It's that it did its own thing in a rather mediocre manner and, when the last season was happening they decided it was time to implement the supposed GRRM ending, which not only meant trying to piece together things that didn't make sense since they didn't even include anything of that foreshadowing from the books, they also threw away seven seasons worth of character development and arcs just for the sake of this ending, making everything feel rushed and nonsensical. It just doesn't work because they missed the opportunity to make it work years ago.
Like, I'm not even watching but seeing people lay out what happened so far is just....jfc. What a mess. It's like a whiplash of stupidity and incompetence.
So yeah, even if the books do have it be this way, the books are structured much differently than the show because at least there is a cohesive story there whereas the show never included any of those interesting aspects. We can accept a painful conclusion to certain arcs, but it has the be earned.
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Date: 2019-05-13 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-14 01:12 am (UTC)But he also said this: https://www.joe.ie/movies-tv/george-r-r-martin-little-sad-certain-things-hbo-done-game-thrones-668534
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Date: 2019-05-13 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-13 10:26 pm (UTC)and yes,some of it IS in the books but they added so much stuff just for shock value
Yeah, plus even if some of that is in the books they could have easily made the conscious decision to not include it and focus on something else in the narrative. But nope, it was all about fulfilling the HBO quota and for the shock value. That's all the show is, essentially. Shock value. There is no coherent story or narrative to follow, because it's just all about the rape, battle scenes and explosions. Characterization, what's that? Plot and following it through to the end? That doesn't exist in Game of Thrones. It's about shocking the audience, even if it makes no sense.
That said,I have honestly given up hope that we will ever get those final 2 books? Which would really suck,I want something different than what they did on the show.
I've been saying for a while that either GRRM is waiting for the show to finally end to reveal the next two books like, "haha, you thought that was how it ends? this is how it truly ends!", or that he honestly doesn't care anymore and realizes the show is gonna reveal all the important things anyway so why bother. As much as I would love for the former to happen since the petty side of me would be absolutely delighted, I just don't think he cares about the series anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if he just abandoned the last two books entirely at this point.
But I agree, I want a different ending than what the show has done. Even if some of the points remain true, it's how they're written that is the fundamental difference.
I just think that, overall, while the concept of doing the show at first was intriguing, they missed the mark completely on what the story actually is about. And it's very telling with the way they've gone about it. It's just sad how the show gained so much popularity that they probably think it's a win either way, because the "reactions" people are having are what they banked on, no matter whether positive or negative. They took something that could have been done well and ruined it for the sake of shock value, and that is the shittiest thing about this, tbh.
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Date: 2019-05-14 05:10 am (UTC)Ofc, this is in light of having stumbled on what's very likely the actual ending of the show. Which, if we assume the ending is what GRRM was planning for in the series, well. A shitty ending is still a shitty ending, no matter how long it took you to get there.
That, and I honestly think the man's tired of the books. I think he'd rather go off and keep working on Wild Cards/the prehistory stuff, cause he's got too many threads going on to wrap it up in two books satisfactorily, so the show may actually be the only canon we have if his health gives.
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Date: 2019-05-14 07:53 am (UTC)Pretty much.
That, and I honestly think the man's tired of the books. I think he'd rather go off and keep working on Wild Cards/the prehistory stuff, cause he's got too many threads going on to wrap it up in two books satisfactorily, so the show may actually be the only canon we have if his health gives.
Which would probably be the shittiest outcome of this whole thing, really, because I'm also of the mind that GRRM probably doesn't care about finishing the books anymore. But if that's the case, it's really unfair to book fans who have waited for so long only to get a very bad ending from a show adaptation that wasn't even closely following the narrative that he was spinning. idk, it's just a huge mess all around.
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Date: 2019-05-17 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-18 10:50 am (UTC)That's where I'm at, too. It's not that I want everything to be sunshine and roses for the ending, but some level of consistency and competence when it comes to storytelling and planting those little moments to demonstrate her slow descent into madness. In good storytelling, there is foreshadowing and then following through all throughout that story with giving particular moments to pay attention to, a gradual build-up with character development. They could have shown the inner struggle she had with not only being a leader and a ruler, but also with the conflict with her bloodline and demonstrating the duality of her greatness as well as madness. That is what they should have done, which would have added more emotional weight to this particular ending for her. I mean, it would've been devastating and heartbreaking, but it would've made sense and I would've accepted that. Not, whatever this random 180 bullshit they pulled out of nowhere.
This is the main problem with Game of Thrones, though, is their fundamental misunderstanding of what the story is actually about. ASOIAF is very character-driven, with The Others being the main unknown threat yes, but the characters all go through personal battles such as their paranoia, whether through prophecies, visions, warnings, internal fears, etc. The show removed all those important character elements and only focused on the surface level nonsense that, in hindsight, didn't advance the story at all. I mean, I kinda knew this years ago which is why I stopped watching, but seeing how they fucked up even more towards the end, it's just...astounding.
Really, I know fandom is discussion, but there's really no discussion to be had when one of you thinks the show has jumped the shark and one of you thinks it's a masterpiece.
I've mostly seen many people rage/rant about it overall, but I have also seen a handful of people who think it's amazing which, sure that is their opinion and they're allowed to it, but they will then turn around and claim that this outrage is just people "overreacting" and then start arguing with people over it, which is annoying because then it becomes this stupid fandom drama (which is not pretty, I've seen that side as well lately and, whew boy, not going there). So, I don't blame you for wanting to turn comments off for whenever you make your post.
If you ever need to rant further though, this post is always open for you to do so, or you can PM me or whatever.
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Date: 2020-05-06 02:23 am (UTC)I'm sure you've seen Lindsay Ellis' two videos on the GoT ending by now. She lays out everything I hated, much more eloquently.
We're supposed to see Dany as "mad" or "bad" and all of her previous brutal actions are evidence of this, etc. EXCEPT every other character on the show (even the "good" ones) has done just as bad. Arya made people into pies! We're allowed to cheer for that, but nor for Dany killing the slavers. Okay. Everyone in the show operates on a medieval standard of brutality, but we're only supposed to judge Dany for it.
Jon being the true heir was a HUGE fucking deal until it wasn't. If he could have just fucked off North anyway, why couldn't Dany have the throne? When she was alive it was UNSPEAKABLE to not recognize the true king, but after she's dead, NBD to elect a king and let the true king go away. Why is this suddenly an option?
Electing the king was a joke. The bantering of the small council at the end was painful. THESE are the people the realm is left to? Bronn? Really?! So much of the show seemed to be about breaking the cycle, and okay, so we chose the king now, but it's a pretty bleak outlook. The common people have just had their city destroyed, and the council is already bickering about money. This was never a show where "things go on more or less the same" feels like a fitting ending.
In the same vein, Dany's story being about subverting expectations feels like a retcon. The way the show treated her, presented her, and framed her--well, it was like Jon. It felt like a hero's journey. It never felt like it was supposed to be a subversion. Of course, I can't really think of a good subversion at the moment to compare it to. The best I have is Will Graham, who is ostensibly the good guy of the show, and who is definitely presented that way to the viewer, and then he starts to slide, dragging the viewer along with him, even though you're still rooting for him all the while. Dany's story felt like one thing until they decided to pull the rug out from under it at the last minute.
Not sure why Arya was so concerned about Dany when she talked to Jon and Sansa (about Dany not being "one of us") when SHE was also going to fuck off to nowhere. Arya's ending was a thing that I actually liked, but if she's planning on abandoning her family, what does it matter who her family is hanging out with?
As Lindsay said, smart characters got real STUPID in the last season.
And finally, the dragon destroys the throne because
obvious symbolismI'm sure the dragon just hated it for some reason.no subject
Date: 2020-05-08 08:58 pm (UTC)Exactly. Trying to claim that it's foreshadowing is pointless because, in that case, you could replace her with any other character in the series and that statement would've qualified. And it's true that the show framed Dany as being a hero from the beginning, she made some missteps along the way but that's part of the hero's journey. Pulling the bait-and-switch at the very end to "subvert audience expectations" is not clever, it's just insulting, to the characters, the intelligence of the audience, and to narrative storytelling as a whole. Furthermore, everything that happened in the last season made me dislike the Starks and the way they were portrayed. I didn't expect them to be best friends with Dany, but considering the harrowing journeys they went through I can see them empathizing with one another and understanding that they have common goals and similarities. And yet somehow it turned into pitting girls against each other thing, which I hated because it really made no sense. They truly tried to alienate Dany as much as possible so she could be viewed as "the dangerous other" so that her death would seem like a karmic victory, not a tragedy.
Then again, we know that Dumb and Dumber just never were fans of the books. They outright admitted their incompetence in a proud manner, never truly understanding the characters or the point of the story. And it makes the series wholly unwatchable after the result of the eighth season.
In a way it makes me angrier knowing that the show was handled by these two clowns in the first place. This is a very dense series that needed people who knew and understood the point of the story to make it work. And yet, with everything revealed about how they got the job, how despite their inexperience with running a show and refusing to have anyone else write for the show besides themselves they couldn't just fire them for whatever reason, and they got recognized for something becoming so worldwide popular only for it to foil in the latter seasons, which by that time they were so done with it and didn't care whether they haphazardly ended it because they got their money, their recognition, and wanted to do other things that would bring them more money. This was merely a networking opportunity for them, nothing more, and it's just so infuriating how little care they placed into it. We were all fooled by that first season, and although I stopped watching a couple of seasons into the show, I can't help but feel bad for those who stuck with it until the very end, despite the bad writing and horrific direction, hoping that somehow it all works out in the end.
I'm just glad that Emilia Clarke still defends Dany, and has been quite supportive of the fans who were displeased with the final season (unlike some of the other actors who act like fans who have voiced their displeasure of the direction of the show in the final season to be "entitled"). You can tell that she was deeply affected by what happened to her character, and it makes my heart hurt for her knowing that she was finding strength and courage in Dany only for that 180 to happen. I'm happy that she's able to find that positivity with other fans who are supporting her, and I will always love Dany no matter what. She deserved better, and I'm glad that a good chunk of people out there agree. Even people who weren't initially Dany fans ended up being upset over the way her character was handled.
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Date: 2020-05-09 07:37 am (UTC)I'm still astounded how everyone in Westeros didn't seem to care about the existential threat of the White Walkers. Cersei was like no big deal, and Sansa was happy to use Dany for her dragons and then toss her aside. Everyone would have been DEAD without the dragons.
Dany's story of not getting along with nobles but having the support of the people was one that I was sure would be repeated in Westeros. How could everyone not love the person who saved them from the ice zombies, etc? Her having the means to defeat the White Walkers just seemed like the obvious way she would end up on the throne. But we didn't get any of that because subversion.
Also, Cersei was a stone cold bitch and deserved a better death than crying and having a ceiling fall on her. I wanted her to go out like a BAMF.
Also, disappointed that Arya turned away from her revenge quest at the last second.
They outright admitted their incompetence in a proud manner, never truly understanding the characters or the point of the story.
I know. That whole thing was so cringeworthy. And I know that they changed things in earlier seasons, too, but once they were left to their own devices and didn't have source material anymore, it completely went off the rails.
I'm just glad that Emilia Clarke still defends Dany, and has been quite supportive of the fans who were displeased with the final season
I always feel bad for actors who get stuck on shows that gradually turn to trash, or whose characters just slide further and further into OOC. I mean, it's a paycheck, but I have to wonder about the satisfaction of doing something that isn't as great as it used to be (SPN, I'm also looking in your direction).
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Date: 2020-05-14 02:47 am (UTC)Seriously. And I mean, they did the entire White Walker arc so dirty by basically making everything about them useless and to be destroyed easily, especially with them being such an looming threat the entire series, but to not have the characters care all that much? That makes zero sense. Here's an unknown entity that is threatening Westeros and all you can do is just shrug your shoulders and go, "welp"? WTF?
And I still can't after them blaming the dragons, and, who was it, Tormund? Who was like, "I don't trust anyone who rides a dragon" or something like that and I'm just like BITCH YOU RODE A DRAGON WHEN DANY SAVED YOUR ASS FROM THE WHITE WALKERS!
Also, Cersei was a stone cold bitch and deserved a better death than crying and having a ceiling fall on her. I wanted her to go out like a BAMF.
That was such a disservice to the character, I still can't believe they gave her a weakass death.
I mean, we can rant for hours about the injustice the show did not just in the final season but just overall throughout the show's run, but basically this was a story that deserved better showrunners/writers. There was just so much wrong with what they did, it's kind of amazing how they fucked up and how much they just don't care, like at all.
I mean, it's a paycheck, but I have to wonder about the satisfaction of doing something that isn't as great as it used to be (SPN, I'm also looking in your direction).
There are some shows, SPN included, where I'm very curious to hear about an actor's thoughts about it after its done and they're no longer underneath contract. Some actors might not want to burn bridges, but there are some who will state discreetly their opinions on certain things (and others that don't give a fuck and will go off the rails and rant about things). I mean, for some of them it is a steady paycheck but sometimes I wonder if they regretted signing their contracts (or extending their contracts) and if it prevented them from doing other things that they might've wanted to pursue.
I know that for some Game of Thrones actors, particularly those that had their characters killed off (esp when the characters were still alive in the books), they had some...choice words about it. Really, there needs to be compilation of all the actors who had negative experiences on that show and spoke about it, whether in a discreet manner or not.
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Date: 2020-06-05 05:35 am (UTC)I know! They literally opened the series with them, and then you've got the whole winter is coming thing, but no one actually seems concerned? It was such a rush job at the end that all of the mythology and world building that had been built up didn't matter and there was no one magical left alive to comment on it or even talk about it. Like, 'oh the curse has been broken' etc. For a song of 'ice and fire' it spent more time at the end on politics (that didn't even make sense!) than it did on the worldbuilding.
And I still can't after them blaming the dragons, and, who was it, Tormund? Who was like, "I don't trust anyone who rides a dragon" or something like that and I'm just like BITCH YOU RODE A DRAGON
The whole populace just had to be against Dany because of Reasons. And I mean, it's not like I think everyone has to like Dany because I like her, but it needs to MAKE SENSE! It made no sense that everyone hated her so much.
Some actors might not want to burn bridges, but there are some who will state discreetly their opinions on certain things (and others that don't give a fuck and will go off the rails and rant about things).
This reminds me of Robert Pattinson, who clearly had no fucks to give about Edward and Bella. It was really kind of hilarious.