I'm just gonna say it, this show didn't deserve the Best Drama Emmy this year.
Especially considering that the voters don’t actually have to watch these shows. The fact that it lost in the other writing and directing categories, and then won the overall award is a testament to how the award show corruption that was illustrated in Pictures at a Revolution hasn't really changed in 50 years.
The cold never bothered me anyway
a
Yeah, it was a bit of a bittersweet schadenfreude.
Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.
I have never cared for Emmys and haven't seen one since I was a kid, but yeah, at most the actors or Emmys for those who worked on the effects/music/etc that aren't writing and especially none for best [Genre] are the only ones they deserve to have any form of nomination in. Because damn they tried their hardest with what tthey got, and for once people aim their vitriol where it belongs.
Edited by OmegaRadiance on Sep 24th 2019 at 1:41:57 AM
Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.
Yeah, I don't know if they looked at the show as a whole for the award or what, but if they were just judging by Season 8 then yeah, that definitely wasn't a deserved win.
Hopefully whatever spinoff series that HBO greenlights aren't written by D&D, especially since Martin has past events completely written out in painstaking detail, so we know who will live and who will die in advance.
I mean, it's overall a win. Everyone who was paying attention knew it was a shoo-in for Best Drama, but the fact it didn't take anything else other than Peter "My acting is so good it helped ruin the show" Dinklage's win is actually impressive.
Edited by Larkmarn on Sep 24th 2019 at 8:34:50 AM
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There is no Planet B
So, does anyone still feel like discussing this show?
There are some fun fan theories that I hoped to see happen or be teased or alluded to.
There are also some things that I wanted to see and we should have seen them, but we didn't.
- Jon/Davos were awesome together. He was the best Hand of the King ever. It was pretty bad we didn't see their goodbye and parting words. Or better yet, Davos should hang out with Jon.
- Did Meera Reed survive the long night anyway?
- The surviving Stark kids always talk about Ned, which is awesome, but what about their mother and brothers? Poor Cat, Robb and Rickon. It's almost as if they forgot them.
Anyway, here are those theories. They're mostly from Shift Alt X's videos. I wonder if anything like this might appear in the books, if they're ever published. My current theory is Martin might publish one book, but the final one is unlikely.
- Obviously, Howland Reed is the person to verify Bran's vision about Lyanna and Raegar. Forget some maester's secret diary.
- I really like the theory that Ashara Dayne is still alive and actually Howland Reed's wife and Meera and Jonen's mother. Mind blown.
- Apparently, there is a theory that Tyrion's first wife is still alive and that she's a prostitute called Sailors' Wife who makes all of her customers "marry" her, but only for one night. Obviously this one was out of the question in the series because Tysha was not mentioned in the crucial scenes when Tyrion talked to Tywin before he killed him, and neither with Jaime.
- I'd personally liked more shipping moments between Sansa and Jon. I know, it's all kinds of eww, but incest runs in the series like a red thread, and kissing cousins are better than aunt/nephew anyway. There is a theory that Sansa's potential matches mirror Lady Ashford's suitors, and according to that, Sansa should end up with a Tyrgaryen. I actually didn't expect they would end up together for real, but some UST wouldn't be bad. It also falls nicely into the original draft pitch when Jon and Arya were supposed to fall in love, much to their horror.
- And my favourite: Varys is secretly a Blackfyre who works to put Young Griff, also a Blackfyre, on the Iron throne. The explanation that Varys works for the good of the realm and for the people is somewhat lacking. His scheming makes more sense if he has a hidden agenda. My favourite part of the theory is that he was cut because he was a boy with royal blood in his veins and that his body parts were used in some blood magic ritual by red priests. (Similarly like Melisandre used Genrdy's blood for the leeches.) That's why Varys hates this religion, its priests and is scared it will spread in Westeros.
At this point, I'd be more shocked if Varys was not a secret Blackfyre loyalist because this would neatly explain all of his actions.
Regarding Ashara Dayne, I'd find it difficult to believe that she was secretly married to another nobleman without anyone knowing about it.
The same counts for Trysha. Maybe it is really her, but I hope that she never reunits with Tyrion, because it would feel too contrieved. Furthermore it would go against Tyrion's descent into villainy to find her again.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been rereading the books and the Blackfyre Rebellions aren’t mentioned until Feast, which adds a lot of credence to Young Griff being a secret Blackfyre.
D&D came out of hiding and answered
some questions at the Austin Film Festival.
Some highlights:
David said that he went to fan casting pages and that is how they found Jason Mamoa.
They acknowledge that they have no idea why after such a dismal pilot why they went forward. “Everything we could make a mistake in, we did.” Script, casting, costume. They think HBO went forward bc they had a lot of foreign pre-sales on the series.
Dan said that he let the actors redefined the roles, esp Maisie and they began writing for the actors, it is like the actor moved into the “house” and redecorated. He said he learned about the characters from the actors. (While also discouraging them to read the source material!)
Dan wanted to remove as many fantasy elements as possible bc “we didn’t just want to appeal to that type of fan.” They wanted to expand the fan base to people beyond the fantasy fan base. When they pitched to HBO, they promised them that they would downplay the fantasy elements. (Paraphrase)
Q:Did you really sit down and try to boil the elements of the books down? Did you really try to understand it’s major elements.
A:No. We didn’t. The scope was too big. It was about the scenes we were trying to depict and the show was about power.
Edited by doineedaname on Oct 27th 2019 at 11:15:19 AM
So let me get this straight, D&D say they wrote the characters to play to the actor’s strengths. At the same time, they chose to strip away Daenerys’ softness and sense of humor when they had an actress in Emilia Clarke, genuinely one of the most bubbly, caring actresses of this generation, playing her. While at the same time Clarke was literally fighting to get those things into the script because she actually read the books, broken them down, and understands Dany more than anyone involved in making these decisions for her character.
Emilia Clarke isn't alone in this. Remember how Lena Headey argued with them that Cersei wouldn’t sleep with Euron in s8? And they had her do it anyways despite her persistent complaints and concerns? That's D&D trying to shirk responsibility for their writing decisions. it’s obvious they exerted full creative control over the characters when it mattered to them and how they wanted the plot to play out, but only when they didn’t care about a particular moment or character did they let the actors interpret the characters (Daenerys’ final moments, Arya calling Sansa the smartest person alive, etc).
It's also bad to know they learned about the characters from the actors
◊, especially Maisie Williams who's been on record saying she never read the source material. Which must explain why Bryan Cogman, back in season 3, was saying in interviews that it was up to Maisie to talk about Arya’s feelings for Gendry, something that as a writer he should've been able to answer without deferring it to her or guessing Arya’s feelings based on the actress's performance.
This live tweet thread probably sums up the rest very well. It’s truly sad that such wonderful material was handed to them with no restriction on what they could change it into, all while multiple actors from the show were publicly stating they did not agree with where the characters were going.
Edited by dmcreif on Oct 28th 2019 at 9:50:38 AM
The cold never bothered me anyway
But that's what happens when you fake your way into jobs you're not qualified for, and their half-assed approach to their show. A lot of people were displeased.
They just admitted HBO said they should do hourlong shows, and told them they should have a writers room (things your showrunners should automatically know). Even worse, they said it was pretty much the actors themselves along with crew that made sure their respective characters were done justice. They didn’t even read the books they were adapting, instead they were insisting on making more of a medieval based show of power than one in the world of fantasy, something which they adamantly wanted to avoid.
It explains a lot. Also, Star Wars dodged a bullet. If fans were pissed about Rian Johnson, who at least read up on old lore (not going to comment on its implementation or The Last Jedi in specifics), I’d shudder to think what they would feel about a D&D-helmed Star Wars had they continued.
The cold never bothered me anyway
Oh yeah. They would have completely fucked whatever story they were intended to tell.
I have problems with TLJ but Rian genuinely tried unlike D&D, and so the products audience wasn't so unified in how it repulsed them because people even came to different conclusions on why they liked/disliked if, unlike D&D "shat the bed" Game of Thrones.
Edited by OmegaRadiance on Oct 29th 2019 at 10:18:04 AM
Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I know that there are mobs of angry nerds out there who think that this is because of the backlash against the Go T ending, but their departure from their SW project almost certainly has way more to do with Disney wanting to slow down on SW movies and that lucrative Netflix deal than anything to do with Go T.
Edited by Millardkillmoore on Oct 29th 2019 at 10:31:10 AM
Disasturbator
As a book fan I want to rant,instead I'll go with Dumb and Dumber lost their star wars gig
ha!
New theme music also a box
Captain of the Dead City
So basically the critical acclaim of the first half of the series was in spite of D&D rather than because of them, is that what we're taking from this?
Because it sounds like the source material, actors, and the various departments (costume, set design, photography) and so on carried them through seasons 1-4 and then when they ran out of books and everyone looked to them with "what's next, captains of this ship?" in their eyes, D&D went "I don't fckin kno, figure it out" and gave them some lines and sorta wrote a finish.
Edited by GoldenKaos on Oct 29th 2019 at 5:37:50 PM
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
Yes, they pretty much admitted to it.
Captain of the Dead City
Like, they can claim credit for downplaying the fantasy aspects? I guess? Because many non-fantasy fans did come in because it wasn't that overtly fantasy. But on the other hand the books already did that from the start.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
Yeah, the first season began with an ice zombie and ended with three baby dragons, so "toned down fantasy elements" is a bit much.
I mean, maybe?
Like, despite that being very true, on paper, anecdotally, the first season was still so divorced from the magic stuff that the dragons felt rather jarring to me. Like "oh shit, right. This is a fantasy show."
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Captain of the Dead City
Yeah, it definitely feels like a period politics piece with fantasy elements rather than a fantasy but based on a certain period in time with politics.
And so do the books, honestly.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
Some of the only things I can really think of when it came to 'Toned Down Fantasy Elements', would be the excision of Lady Stoneheart from the plot.
Probably because, unlike the White Walkers who are nameless mook zombies to mindlessly kill and walk dramatically while glaring, Lady Stoneheart needs personality and motivation to directly correlate to her inherently magical nature. I feel like, if they could have excised Jon Snow's resurrection and the Children of the Forrest, they would have.
Mostly because they rather glaringly did little with them.
Yeah, they introduced the Children of the Forest just to kill them off and there was no reason for Jon Snow to be killed/resurrected other than to trick people into thinking he was dead.
The planned "Long Night" spinoff has been scrapped...
@Millard While it is kind of an evil versus evil conflict, there are sympathetic figures on both sides.
Corlys Velaryon, Adam of Hull and his brother, Daemon’s daughters , Nettles and Rhaenrya’s sons are all sympathetic. Then there’s Bloody Ben, Black Aly and Elmo Tully.
Daeron the Daring and debatably Larys Strong as well.
"You can't change the world without getting your hands dirty."