Game of Thrones [Potential Book Spoilers]

Selmy's early death doesn't bother me all that much because it was a great death, but I would have liked to see more of him. I can imagine his arc being realizing people are more complex than his ideals of honor by way of Jorah Mormont getting his redemption with Dany. Then going to Westeros and having both Selmy and Mormont fall fighting as Back-to-Back Badasses protecting Dany during the Battle for the Dawn, two radically different Knights united by one purpose and one Queen, now dying together.

Although, on the wilder side, Selmy living through the Battle for the Dawn and having to witness Dany unravel would have also been interesting. Imagine him and Varys commiserating over both having once served one Mad King and now possibly serving a Mad Queen. Then Selmy watching Varys die, completely heartbroken how History Repeats. Could be an interesting route for his character, then have him probably die in the Fall of King's Landing after finally snapping and going against the orders to massacre the city.

Speaking of Jorah, a part of me actually wishes his storyarc on a Ambiguous Ending when Dany sent him away

It was a relatively common (if unlikely) guess at the time, for a very brief period, that Jorah would never show up again after that scene. It was a beautiful moment, a tearful goodbye, Jorah and Dany finally coming to terms with their feelings (i.e Jorah loving Dany and Dany appreciating Jorah in spite of his betrayal) and it even provided a sort of poetic Book Ends to his story, as we first saw Jorah exiled on account of dishonor at his lowest possible point, and then we see him last "exiled" once more, but this time on account of his honor and Undying Loyalty to Daenerys. Jorah the Wanderer, still wandering, but now his honor reforged and his principles remade.

Jorah had his great moments since coming back (namely his interactions with Lyanna, Sam and his Heroic Sacrifice), even if they were really truncated by the rushed pace of seasons 7-8, but there'd be something beautiful about having that Ambiguous Ending up to the audience. Not as satisfying, I suppose, but still beautiful in some level.

Although I do love the poetic irony of Jorah dying holding a sword called Heartsbane while defending Daenerys, his heart's bane. I just wish they had given his death slightly more punch by having him whisper one last "Khaleesi..." to Daenerys.

You know, the Starks may have won the story, but Daenerys won the legacy. In terms of cultural significance, the Starks have nothing on Daenerys. She is still the face of the show. Her status as a cultural icon is so far above any of the other Game of Thrones characters that people who never even watched the show know of her. I think the most people will remember from the Starks is the "Winter is coming" meme. Daenerys, though? She's here to stay. Let winter come as it may.

That seems like a completely random comment, but ok.

I think all the "main" Houses have some pretty significant cultural handprints as iconic characters go. Daenerys is pretty big culturally, but I'd say very much on the same level as Arya, Jon and Ned and the Starks and Targaryens are on the same level culturally as far as "iconic families" go.

The character who outweighs everybody as far as cultural handprints is Tyrion, anyway.

It would be interesting — to me at least — to hear what people who never watched the show or never read the books think about this. I know for a fact that even people who didn't watch The X Files knew who Mulder and Scully were — at least they knew their names and some knew who was the believer and who was the sceptic. Similar with Star Trek TNG and Captain Picard and Data.

I think Ned Stark made a huge impression. He's everyone's beloved lord, protecting his family and his people, fulfilling his Noblesse Oblige; he's everyone's loving and beloved father who died a horribly unfair but noble death and he's everyone's Good King. Sean Bean absolutely nailed it.

With other Starks, I'm less sure, but Arya and Sansa and Robb sure made an impression on me, and their direwolves as well... but their later story lines were problematic and the ending and resolution is kinda sour and bitter.

Targaryens as a whole might be remembered for their unique look and dragons.

And my guess is that Deanerys and Jon Snow are equally impactful. They were both hyped in media a lot.

Edited by XFllo on May 4th 2020 at 2:26:43 PM

From my experience the characters everyone tends to know by osmosis seem to be:

• Tyrion ("the witty dwarf")
• Cersei ("the baddest bitch in the building")
• Joffrey ("the asshole kid king")
• Ned ("the honorable sean bean")
• Jon ("the hero of the show right?")
• Arya ("the cute assassin")
• Daenerys ("the dragon queen")
• Night King ("the ice zombie leader")

The Hound is, out of the secondary characters, probably the one with the largest pop culture handprint.

Edited by Gaon on May 4th 2020 at 10:13:47 AM

god damn Cleganebowl

Also,Stannis with his 20 good men

All I know of Dany making a mark on pop culture is all those dumbfucks naming their kids "Khaleesi" because they're too stupid to remember character names.

Twenty of House Goodman was on Ramsay's side. Stannis is the one who got screwed over.

It's things like this that make me realise how the Viewers Are Morons mindset became as widespread as it is.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 4th 2020 at 12:04:21 PM

I have no idea how so many people consistently misspell ‘Kelly C’

Edited by Millardkillmoore on May 4th 2020 at 10:07:51 AM

> Twenty of House Goodman was on Ramsay's side. Stannis is the one who got screwed over.

I keep forgetting that for some reason

It wasn't anything significant, just a way for Ramsay to become stupidly OP because apparently Benioff and Weiss don't know how to make a villain actually threatening or add drama without it coming across as artificial.

Seriously, in Winds of Winter, not only is Stannis in a fairly good position on his march to Winterfell (those Karstarks that were supposed to turn on him in the middle of the battle? He found them out and has the leaders clapped in irons), Shireen is nowhere near him.

Edited by theLibrarian on May 5th 2020 at 3:29:43 AM

I still think the more interesting outcome would have been the build up to Ramsay... only for Lord Bolton to kill Ramsay the second his first son is born. Ramsay dies with the knowledge that all his fears of his father were completely accurate. And it's subverting expectations without losing momentum and build up; any build up for Ramsay already existed for Bolton anyway and it still perfectly works in character.

That way the fight with Jon is also a much clearer battle of strategies between the younger inexperienced Jon and the older experienced Bolton. Ramsay wins because the plot needs him to. Bolton can win because he has the guile and strategy to do so without the plot forcing it. I also think... where everyone wants to see Ramsay die (same as we hated Joffery) Bolton seemingly cares for his wife and son and is hardly the monster Ramsay is (if still a monster in other less-front-and-center aspects). I think Bolton being our antagonist opens questions of what do we do with him after? Kill him? What happens to Lady Walder who clearly hasn't done anything wrong or their kid?

It's less 'clean' than Ramsay just murdering them but I think digging into the messy character situations and dynamics and politics of it all is... kinda the point of Game of Thrones here and what we're interested in.

But, again, WE GOT 3 SEASONS LEFT BOYS AND WE GOTTA GET TO THAT FINISH LINE. KILL THEM ALL! GO! GO! GO!

> Shireen is nowhere near him.

Shireen is burned by someone else

Dragom Demands has figured out for some time now: Subverting expectations is never the goal. Its to show off thejr favorite actors and Emmy Awards bajt(Notice they had the last episode they wrote put up for an enmy).

Its why they added Dorne to season 5. They were never planning to di Dorne until an actress they liked played Ellaria Sand, shoving all that into it at the last second, deciding on a whim to have Arya kill the Night King, etc.

And this is why a lot of fans hate the phrase "subverting expectations": anytime a director or writer says this, it may be a sign of CYOA or Writing by the Seat of Your Pants.

Say what you will about GRR Martin, he has a plan and he tries to have the plan make sense.

When JMS was backed into a corner at the start of season 5 of Babylon 5 he tried his best to make it work^note He lost is S5 notes and had to rebuild it from memory, see the Triva page for B5.

There was an arc with a character that even diehard "fivers" say went on too long. An actor was stuck portraying a character who's death should have been tragic - but many cheered because the character was The Scrappy.

But at least S5 of B5 made sense.

The GOT writers seemed to have decided to wing it as they passed what Martin had nailed down and then decided to just end it as fast as possible.

I get it, even the actors were ready to move on after having put in 6 years of their life into this by then start of season 7.

But see my point above - Babylon Five almost didn't get season 5 until a channel hop to TNT. TNT paid for it and JMS had to deliver something.

If you were at my place for a party and asked for a soda and I handed you a cup of water and said "We're out, I sent Alice to get more." I have surprised you but that makes sense, even if it's not what you wanted. If I handed you a newspaper and said "Meh", all I have done is pissed you off even if I was out of soda.

The writers and showrunner should have expected that the fans would have wanted some form of closure or at least an ending that makes sense. Ayra could've contributed to the Night King's death instead of coming across as a Mary Sue moment. Danni could have been given a three episode arc where her downfall and John's exile could have been setup.

But nope, it's wrap it up time, let's get on with the sho- what's that? The fans hate us? Oh we were just 'subverting their expectations!'

I mean, GRRM's version of "subverting expectations" entailed taking the delicate features of familiar fantasy tropes and smashing them repeatedly against the cold hard wall of reality in a Medieval period world. Westeros is a fairly realistic world where the good guys don't always win, princes and princesses don't get to live fairy tale lives and every action has a logical consequence. It's part of why the books are taking so long, GRRM broadly knows where he wants to go with the story, but he's built it thus far based on characters making decisions and taking actions in line with their motivations and that makes sense for their characters, and then other characters reacting to that in the same vein, and other characters reacting to that in the same vein etc etc - it can become a very unwieldy house of cards that make for a great and consistent story for the readers, but a nightmare for the writer to bring those threads back to where they want to conclude the story - assuming they still want to keep that consistent method of steering characters. If it defied expectations, it's because fiction often stops short of many of the crazier or more uncomfortable extremes of reality (see: truth is stranger than fiction etc) and making those hard decisions e.g. killing Ned, Red Wedding - were shocking because many writers just aren't brave enough to make hard decisions that nevertheless make sense within the story - not just because they had shock factor.

The showrunners didn't get that, they maintained the shock factor as much as they could, but skimped on things being the logical consequences of actions, and in their drive to get to the ending, they put landing the ending as priority 1, character motivations be damned.

D&D also tried to excise as much of the overtly magical elements of the plot as they could, because they wanted 'more realism,' and I certain that bit them in the ass when they got past where the books are, asked GRRM what was going to happen, only to be told that they removed the element that was to be used to solve the problem. You know what is a great way to make Dany's fate make more sense, besides set it up better and not have it happen in 1 episode? Have Young Grif show up in Westeros as a competing claimant, THEN have a bunch of her supporters turn on her for penis based reasons. But no, they cut him out because they're impatient.

I HONESTLY think that is the plan for the books, rather than Cersei (who should have been hated for blowing up the Sept, as in all out riots/revolts) who is on the throne it'll be Young Grif so Dany isn't going against a hated queen but a beloved hero king to already liberated the country from Cersei.

GRRM aparently mentioned at some point Dany isnt going to burn cities in the bokks. Which if so, means it was likely a D&D thing(especially when the one most likely to do that for no reason is Cersei).

I think you should find a cite for that.

I'm semi-active in ASOIAF online discussions (and tend to be a D&D defender). There is a line in one of the books (I think A Clash of Kings) where Dany imagines being cheered by crowds and talks about how she wouldn't burn cities to the ground.

Some people brought up that passage as evidence that D&D got it wrong. And I'm guessing that's probably what you are referring to.

However, I feel like the passage is much more evidence that Dany will burn cities, both because she brings it up in sort of a Suspiciously Specific Denial way and because of the likelihood that she won't be cheered in Westeros.

IIRC, there was a livejournal comment where he responded to the theory that Dany would burn down the Water Gardens with a very firm no but I can't actually remember when they asked him that.

Edited by Nouct on Jun 22nd 2020 at 12:06:51 PM

Oh yes. I do remember that. Which honestly surprised me, because tv show or no tv show, that one had seemed likely. Not sure if there is an exact trope, there's kind of a thing (at least in something with the tone of ASOIAF) that you don't introduce something beautiful unless you are going to destroy it. Cf. Oldtown in the books.

Also, I didn't mean my post to come across as hostile, and hope it didn't.

That did happen, but it was very specifically about the Water Gardens.

Honestly I think the end of the show is more or less how the books will/would end, for the most part: Winter falls at Winterfell, they battle a human foe in KL, Daenerys goes haywire, Jon has to go against her, Bran becomes King. The parts I think will not happen is Sansa becoming Queen in the North and Cersei in specific being the final boss (rather than, as mentioned, Griff).

A user here by the name of Mad Skillz once broke down all the foreshadowing to this in the actual books once.

I'm not so sure about winter ending at Winterfell, Danys vision suggests the Trident iirc.

Well the Dragon Demands continues to delve into the madness of D&D and has found the biggest clue that Mad Dany was a last minute D&D whim(Like Cerseis miscarriage being removed)

Everything points to Cersei being the mad Queen originally and Dany setting off the wildfire by accident. Which at least makes her culpable due to what she was willing to do to enemy soldiers with their human shields, but not the mastermind plotting the city being burned.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Jun 28th 2020 at 5:53:28 AM