At the height of Woke as well.
Kinda funny how much the showrunners fumbled that bag. Anyway Knight of the seven kingdoms is pretty good
At the height of Woke as well.
Kinda funny how much the showrunners fumbled that bag. Anyway Knight of the seven kingdoms is pretty good
if you read the books you would know that the “heel turn” the show made up made absolutely no sense for Dany’s character and the general non-cynical heroes that GRRM creates. GRRM is really a romantic at heart and his heroes are those “that try to do what is right, even when they fail. The act of trying is what is heroic. The less likely they are to win, the more heroic their stand”.
His world is grim, but it is not grimdark. GRRM creates low lows so that his heroes can overcome the cynicism of the world and achieve high highs.
Dany is GRRMs most empathic and genuinely good person in the entire book series. It makes absolutely no sense she would go evil tyrant over zero foreshadowing or build up in her character arc. She is the ultimate symbol of “fire and blood” to GRRM, which he has used in many short stories even outside of ASOIAF universe to talk about John Brown-esque burning of slavers and liberation at gunpoint. GRRM is a secret “tankie” who support violent revolution and purging of slavers and the like.
I could see Dany being seen as a tyrant by the lords of westeros who hate her reforms, but the showrunners confused that with her actually being a tyrant. That would have been a much more interesting story, Dany saving the world and doing everything right and doing the most moral thing and still being hated as a “foreign queen” by a bunch of reactionary shithead lords.
Interesting. Most of what I thought I knew about ASoIaF comes from cultural osmosis concerning the show, so I figured the books were just edgy “caring about anything except your own personal gain is stupid and naive” nihilism.
The way you describe them actually reminds me a lot of Red Rising, a book series I happen to love. It’s about the protagonists waging a bloody civil war against a ruthless slave empire with the goal of building an egalitarian republic, and despite the many, many terrible things that happen along the way (Pierce Brown does not pull his punches when it comes to the psychological toll of war on soldiers, the violence and privation a massive civil war inflicts upon the civilian population, or the depraved cruelty of slavers), they keep trying, keep carrying each other, keep holding onto their hope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhA2_aglxxE (13:21 is the relevant part)
If you have 25 minutes to watch some dork comparisons from one of the most knowledgeable folks in the fandom, I’d recommend this video. It really lays out what made the GoT show and specifically the final seasons so terrible, and how they are antithetical to the books.
Knight of the Seven Kingdoms much more accurately reflects the tone of the book series, even asoiaf. The books are colorful not drab like the show, it’s filled with both tragedies and victories, it deeply explores relationships and condemns the feudal systems hypocrisies and problems. You can tell GRRM very much has a daddy-issue with authoritarian rightwing reactionary older men being shitheads, all of his villains are the most patriarchal rich selfish reactionary pieces of shit. All of his heroes are more salt of the earth (Davos and Dunk) or bastards (Jon) or dwarves (Tyrion) or exiled princess sold into slavery (Dany) or women breaking gender norms (Arya and Brienne) or caring mothers (Catelyn).
I hated the girlbossification of Sansa holy shit, it’s why I checked out of the final two seaons when they were airing and only finally watched them last year. I wonder if he touches on that
Sansa’s entire plot in the show is disgusting. Littlefinger selling her to Ramsay Bolton to SA? WTF?!? Littlefinger is obsessed with her and her mom, he would never do that. The show just wanted to have shocking SA scenes and have a SA revenge sideplot. FUCK YOU D AND D
“We abused the young girl character that so many of you hated, and then turned her into a stone cold badass we’ll allow to sit in the same room as her sister you all love (who we also abused), now you can shut up and forget about her entirely”
So much SA was added that was not in the source material. So much was moved from ancillary events to on the screen happening to the main character.
Another disgusting example is the SA scene where Jaime attacks Cersei. It is egregiously offensive, never occured, reverses Jaime’s character growth AWAY from Cersei, reverses the actual dynamic of their relationship which is that Cersei is much more abusive and controlling and hateful. Jaime really did love her originally and then eventually realized he was being abused and left her and moved on. His entire arch with Brienne is about this. Then to have them die together and make it romantic? Their toxic abusive incestuous relationship??
Will check it out, thanks!
What the heck, I didn’t know this about ASOIAF. I just thought GRRM just likes to torture and kill the good people while the bad people stay winning and when they start losing, it’s not even a satisfying win for the good guy. Just an underwhelming Pyrrhic victory. ALWAYS subverting expectations with an unsatisfying route to the conclusion. Character arcs that end up fizzling out or completely reversed. This is based on what I read about GRRM giving D&D notes on the final two seasons. AKOTSK I though was GRRM throwing a bone to the people about a miniscule case of “good people” somewhat winning. So was my reading of ASOIAF based on the show completely wrong?
No the bad people get what’s coming too, and the North remembers. There are certainly moments of despair where it looks bleak and the bad guys are winning, but there are also many victories. The first person to get dragons in hundreds of years is like the sweetest most empathetic girl who was sold into slavery, and she uses it to overthrow an entire slave empire and free the slaves. Those that abuse the smallfolk like The Mountain’s men and Vargo Hoat’s clan get their come-uppance eventually, there’s the Brotherhood without Banners getting revenge and fighting dirty for the smallfolk. The evil slaver Valyrian empire was overthrown by assassins from Braavos, a hidden city of escaped slaves. History in general improves. In real ancient times there was some truly horrendous shit, this is like the real world with history that progresses and sometimes has reactionary setbacks. Ned’s good example as a kind and honorable leader made him have so many die hard loyalists they were cleaning up Boltons and Freys and baking them into pies, joining civil wars against the tyrannous abusive new lords.
You’re reigniting the love I had for the series before season 7 and 8. Where I saw all the character arcs being butchered (hints were prolly there earlier but I started picking the up in the later seasons) and thought it’s how GRRM too wanted the arcs to end. I used to live and breathe everything GoT. Jaime was the one I was most pissed off about. If what you’re saying is true, I’m itching to get into the books to get a feel for how GRRM actually wrote the characters so that I can overwrite the stupidity from the show, even though the books are not finished. What do you think?
The books are extremely well written. GRRM writes a stream of conscious interior style of multiple different point-of-view characters and they are all extremely distinct and complex and consistent. The worldbuilding is also much more intricate and vast, you’ll either have to do multiple re-reads or watch videos or read forum posts to truly get all of the meanings and subtexts and connections and hidden references and symbols. It’s honestly an absurd masterpiece already even unfinished. The audiobooks of the first 3 read by Roy Dotrice are excellent as well.
Till season 6 of the show I too was of the same opinion. Just imagining how amazing all the storylines could potentially turn out would get me sooo hyped. I’ve read many fantasy books and shows, with Wheel of Time being my favorite rn (tied with Curse of the Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold) but this is after I watched GoT die in the last 2 seasons. If you asked me at S6, it would be my favorite series ever. So I’m excited to feel that hype again with the books if what you’re saying is true.
Btw, do you think Dany’s and Jaime’s arcs (others as well) in the show are how the books are projected to have them turn out as well? Cuz I remember hearing that D&D got the bullet points about the ending and character arcs from GRRM himself. Is that true or is GRRM’s vision for the arcs and the ending really different from what the show gave us?
Spoilers All, but much of this is not yet happened in the books but is educated conjecture based on the World of Ice and Fire and the myths and legends of westeros and the themes of the story and character arcs:
Jaime is not going to SA cersei, undo all of his character growth and then die lovingly in Cersei’s arms, no. This is a ridiculous and stupid undoing of his character arc. He may actually murder Cersei himself to fulfill the Valonqar prophecy (the prophecy Cersei had about being strangled by her little brother, she always assumed it to be Tyrion but she’s the elder twin).
Dany will also not go mad and burn the smallfolk and be murderered by Jon. That is also ridiculous.
It’s hard to discuss the ending of the books relative to the show because there’s many characters and plotlines that were omitted, such as Young Griff aka Fake Aegon aka the Mummer’s Dragon aka the 6th Blackfyre Rebellion. The Euron plotline being another major casualty as he is the major villain for the final part of the story and WAY better in the books. He is attempting to marry Dany and steal one of her dragons, he sent his brute brother with a dragon-binding horn to go blow the horn and use the Greyjoy fleet to pick her and her army up from Meereen. Euron will be calling down the red comet at Old Town, this is the most heavily foreshadowed event in the entire series. It’s how long nights happen, massive extinction level meteors crashing into the earth. This has been done before, by the Children of the Forest (The Hammer of the Waters that broke the arm of Dorne) and by the Bloodstone Emperor (the original Azor Ahai).
There’s so much cut from the show the endings cannot even be compared. Euron and Young Griff’s plots are heavily intertwined with Dany’s plot so how can I even begin to describe how it will differ.
Jon’s story will also be much different, he will be resurrected (much more wolflike as he has merged with ghost during his death) but possibly by the white walkers and not by Melisandre. There is precedence for sentient cold wighting in the character of Coldhands. Either way, I believe he is the Night King. He is who the white walkers have been searching for, testing every night’s watchmen they come across to. The white walkers in the book do not have a “Night King” like the show has, they are instead looking for a leader, they are more ghost-like creatures that have language and cruel laughter and who have weird rituals to test the people they come across. The white walkers were created during the first long night by Azor Ahai/The Bloodstone Emperor invading the Weirwood trees. Their leaves changed from green to red, and the humans moved into the trees and became the old gods (gaining near omniscience but becoming unmoored from time), while the white walkers began appearing outside of the trees. ‘Ghosts who emerged from the wood’ is the first description of them given, and it is their nature. They are the evicted spirits of the trees, or the projected old gods, vengeful and hungry ghosts. Jon’s story will be to right this wrong and to return the white walkers to their home and basically “kill” the old gods. He will be seen as a traitor to humanity as he marches the white walkers through the wall (like he did the wildlings, and was seen as a traitor) and to the God’s Eye, where there are still green-leafed Weirwood trees that are uncorrupted.
Dany will likely help Jon in saving the world, likely giving him one of her dragons, and she will likely be reviled in some way by many of the lords who instead side with fake Aegon (Illyrio’s son with Serra, a Lysene maiden of Blackfyre/Targaryen descent). She may accidentally set off a cache of wildfire by dragonfire in King’s Landing and thus be seen as a tyrant or murderer, but she would never purposefully kill civilians for no reason. That’s not her character. Her role in saving the world is going to do more with dealing with Euron I think, as he will steal the 3rd dragon. She will have go to confront the “Night’s King” Jon who is marching an undead army south and have to realize that he is actually the good guy, and she will have to confront the “Azor Ahai” savior Euron Greyjoy who is calling down a meteor like the original and realize he is evil. She will have to chose between the two them and see through the lies.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The books are honestly pretty good and so is the show up to a point, minus all the SA though.
I think in the future the series will be used as a case study. The last seasons were so bad they completely overwrote the cultural memory of all that lead up to them. It became gambo and had always been gambo. But there’s a reason why everyone and their mum was watching it. The entire internet sat down and watched it together for a reason.
It was good fantasy. Until it wasn’t
Subverting expectations and all that.
In a similar vein, why did R’Hollor resurrect Jon Snow, when Jon Snow wasn’t at all necessary to killing the big evil prophesied monster?
Jon Snow: “Why was I brought back to life”
Red Priestess: “Your sister is going to kill the night king, and it’d mean a lot to my god if you were there to support her.”
And why did Arya get the face-change powers when they had fuck-all importance to the plot? Chechovs Eldritch power.
Add to that their idea of a tyrant is “motivated by bells being annoying and the tyranny is killing small folk.” Rather than tyranny being stuff like “hey you can’t just kill peasants and also you have to invest in the state you’re running. Maximum of 4 jousts a year.”
Poor girl didn’t even want to go to Westeros. That was her brothers thing.
I never read the books and watched the series with my partner who’d already seen it all.
There’s a lot of foreshadowing about her going coocoo-bananas tbh it’s been a while but I was aware of the criticism of the ending season going in.
That being said there’s a lot of really silly teleporting armies and logistical inconsistency in that last bit. Plus the dragon who got shot from below at the apex of the bolt’s trajectory was soooooooooo bad. There’s no magical physics in westeros as far as i could tell.
GRRM puts a little bit of “madness” into every single Targaryen, even the good ones. Just like John Brown was a little bid mad. It still is definitely not true to Dany’s character to have her become a tyrant for no reason. When you are in her head for thousands of pages it’s more clear how completely bullshit it is.
The show was much more full on cynical, which matches the “trying to fix things is evil actually” cynical centrism of HBO and the showrunners. The books are not like that really, they display terrible stuff happening but they’re filled with hope and idealism and heroism. Things are not futile here, history and people can be changed and improved and society can evolve.
On a similar topic is Jonas Čeika’s analysis of the fash themes in The Dark Knight
There’s pretty reasonable evidence in the books alone for Dany going mad. Subtle hints that the show didn’t recreate well. And since the end of Thrones is going to roughly match GRRMs planned ending, then it’s likely that Dany could be ambiguously mad and definitely does some burning.
nope
This is GRRM talking about his heroes, clearly talking about Jon and Dany. Does this sound like someone who will go insane and kill everyone and become evil? This is such a trope that GRRM will obviously avoid the “swerve”
The “mixed results” he talks about are also the “bittersweet ending” he has described the ending of the series as. The show ending was not “bittersweet” it was rancid and cynical and nihilistic.