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Game of Thrones Discussion Thread


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1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

The Night King got Snoked IMO. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why was he doing this? Eight years of buildup, but apparently all that didn't matter. And we may never know, unless GRRM finally puts it in a book.

Literally what I was trying to tell my brother....

 

The entire setting is based around him.  Yet that was what we saw...?

 

The prince thing was just the icing on the cake of obnoxious...  Princess or not.  It's just that it was handled so... Boringly.

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One idea i had after the episode is that the Night King is from House Targaryen since he is immune to dragon fire.

 

The way he died was profoundly anti-climactic.  Arya just smokes him from out of nowhere... No back and forth, no villain monologue, no understanding of why he's trying to do any of this?  Nothing?  Ok....

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We know only slightly less about the Night King than we do about Robert Baretheon or Tywin Lannister in their youth. The details aren't that important to the story. It's not complicated, the undead want to kill the living. The author just doesn't have a fascinating story to tell concerning them.

 

The Children of the Forest created him and the other White Walkers to drive away the the invading First Men in Westeros.

 

Like any other doomsday weapon in a fictional setting, they ran out of control and were going to kill everything. The Children changed their minds, the Night King and the Walkers were driven to the far North, the Wall was built and the rest is history.

 

The undead were the main sub-plot of the story but the main plot has always been who sits on the Iron Throne.

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Sometimes the big bad's only real purpose is to serve as an offstage threat that drives the real action, which is the interplay between the main characters.  Sheer relentlessness worked for the Terminator.  Some kind of closing statement would have been nice, though.  Like, "Where is the dagger?"

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1 hour ago, Grailknight said:

We know only slightly less about the Night King than we do about Robert Baretheon or Tywin Lannister in their youth. The details aren't that important to the story. It's not complicated, the undead want to kill the living. The author just doesn't have a fascinating story to tell concerning them.

 

The Children of the Forest created him and the other White Walkers to drive away the the invading First Men in Westeros.

 

Like any other doomsday weapon in a fictional setting, they ran out of control and were going to kill everything. The Children changed their minds, the Night King and the Walkers were driven to the far North, the Wall was built and the rest is history.

 

The undead were the main sub-plot of the story but the main plot has always been who sits on the Iron Throne.

 

Exactamundo 

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Watched it last night.

 

Loved it.

 

Surprised by the low body count (of central characters.)

 

One thing that continues to bug me is the total and utter lack of any sort of tactical sense being displayed by the heroes (or indeed anyone in Westeros.)

 

They have a big castle. With, like, walls and stuff. They could have sat on the walls with their giant flying flame-throwers breathing fiery destruction down where ever needed.

 

But nooooooo. Let's all stand outside in the wind and the dark and wait for the hordes and hordes of undead things that'll just charge straight on  down your spear, tangling it, while a buddy of theirs bites your face off. Oh and, that Dothraki cavalry? Let's just let them charge off into the darkness, against impossible odds. They'll be fine.

 

Seriously, where did they learn to general? Watching WW1 documentaries and thinking "Yeah, attrition, that's the way." :stupid:

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I discussed this subject with a friend of mine who like and watch this show a lot more than me. 

And I were surprised over how divided we were on one important subject. 

It was not who should kill who and who or what tactics were stupid or anything like that but rather the arch of the show.

 

I wanted the dead to be the final enemy while my friend wanted Cerci to be the final enemy. 

 

I wanted a story which would explore if humanity have the ability to stand together no matter how much blood have been spilled between them in an effort to stave off certain death. 

Off course how that would come about would be very tense and dramatic after all that have happened and its not a sure thing that such an alliance would hold at all. 

Alternatively I would like to see them defeating Queen Cerci first be it as a living human or maybe she become a undead ice Queen of some kind. Before they took on the "main enemy"

My point is not how it would happen or one of my ideas being cooler than another but that I never even considered that the undead plague would be an "hurdle on the road" towards Cerci.

 

My friend saw it very differently he was glad the undead were killed off and he would have liked it to happen a lot sooner and get all the "magic stuff" out of the show to focus on the violent soap opera that is the house politics in game of thrones.  

He felt that Cerci deserves to be the main villain and the main conflict to resolve the shows final episodes. 

He also liked the intrigues of game of thrones a lot more than the fantasy elements (which is why he is a bigger fan of the show than me).

 

His opinion made sense to me, who always felt that Martin used the undead, John Snow and the fantasy elements as "bait" to get us to want to read what he really wanted to write about. Which is why I never finished the first book nor read any others. 

 

 

I think this is indicative of a song of ice and fires success. That he managed to hook readers who like classic works and also people who like modern work. 

And no matter what way they had gone they would have faced backlash from one of the camps. 

 

So my question to the thread is: What do you like best? A strange supernatural enemy or an human one? What is the most satisfying to fight in games and or read about in books or see in shows?

 

For me its the monsters all the way. This do NOT mean I dont want intrigue and conflict in between humans or stuff like that, quite to contrary I think it can add a lot to the drama. But what is it for you?

 

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Okay. Now, I dropped out of Game of Thrones before last season. because the Battle of the Bastards annoyed me and I only have so much time for pop culture.

 

That being said, the whole dead/winter versus the living thing doesn't have to be dropped just because the plot is turning towards a resolution of "who sits on the Iron Throne." What makes Old Nan's story about the Night King so creepy is that he's a Lord Commander of the Night's Watch who is seduced over to the side of Death by a sexy, sexy zombie.

 

Winter/Death has already had a huge win here. The Wall is gone, the Night Watch is all but disbanded, hunger and winter stalk the land, the objectively pro-End-of-Everything candidate already sits on the Iron Throne. The only thing lost is a living-dead revenant raised by the Children of the Forest in an ill-judged necromantic exercise in making bargains with eldritch forces.

 

As it happens, said objectively pro-Death candidate is being up by two creepy necromancers, one of whom has raise a living dead revenant in an exercise in . . . .  Do the math here, people!

 

I'm not the writer, and I don't have the fan's fan's credit to argue that this is where the narrative is going. I have no idea if that's where it's going. But it does use existing plot elements to bring everything together to a satisfying moment when Jaime runs Cersei through, and the corpse's eyes snap open --blue. 

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All the following comes with a YMMV. :) 

 

(I love a good discussion about story, the how's and why's. But I happily accept that everyone has their own POV on these things and certainly don't take differing opinions as personal affronts. I hope I'm not causing any.)

 

@Trencher - I agree with your friend; Cersei is the main villain and the climactic conflict needs to be with her. As far as characters go she is just much, much more interesting.

 

Cersei is just a much better villain than Night King. She is clever (although I always say she's not as clever as she thinks she is) and so utterly ruthless. At the same time we can see how she got to be who she is. We've met her father, her husband, her brothers, and all the other men (not women!) who've shaped her life. She started the whole thing by poisoning someone who was a threat to her children. Despite her best efforts those children are now all dead. She's been horribly abused, she's been a mass murderer, she has hit rock bottom and climbed back up, all the way to the throne. She has earned her place as main villain. She's a great character, well written, well acted.

 

I wanted the undead finished off last season to be honest. I am so over zombies and all things zombie like. Night King is dull dull dull. All he does is move implacably along killing everything in his path. Toxxus mentioned above wanting a villain monologue before Nighty got knifed. How? The guy's never said a word. And what would he say? "Brains?" Or maybe it'd be a long diatribe about how if he is a bitter and twisted thing, he was made that way by forces that are now extinct, but is exacting a terrible revenge on all living things anyway. You know, the whole long pre-history of Westeros? Tragic, but not very suitable to a climactic battle. Sorry Toxxus, but I gotta disagree with you there.

 

To put it another way - the two (main) arcs are:

 

The Iron Throne - a character driven conflict between a bunch of very well drawn characters, all with believable motives, all of whom have a great deal of audience investment.

 

The Dead - representing forces antithetical to all life. Ominous and terrifying, but ultimately impersonal. A natural disaster.

 

I plain don't like disaster movies. I find them kinda dull. The only way they work is by showing the stresses they place on the characters. Yes, we have gotten some of that. But it's been the B plot the whole way along. The audience (and I'm going to make a broad sweeping generalisation) is going to invest more in the A plot because that's the one they've had the most opportunity to invest in.

 

Politics, and all the vicious, backstabbing skullduggery that comes with it, are much more interesting to me. Okay, yes, one can do stories with all the politicking back and forth with zombies (Walking Dead, I assume, does this) but that's not how GoT has unfolded. It could have. But it didn't. So the final, climactic fight needs to be the Starks, Dany, and Cersei. 

 

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Similar to drunkinduty said, since the end of season 1, there has been two plots: The threat from the north, and the threat from across the sea. That was obvious. 

 

Seasons 2-5 or sowere internal politicking involving the Great Houses of Westeros. Meanwhile we had Dany assembling her armies that she would invade Westeros with. And we had a further glimpse of the threat beyond the Wall. 

 

Eventually, we had Dany land on Westeros and the Night King get close to the Wall.

 

Season 7 was a preliminary to season 8. Dany clashed with the Lanisters while the Night King breached the Wall.   

 

I was interested in the Night King plot and don't really care for the Iron Throne storyline so the mid seasons were watched with barely interest. 

 

The tv show is called Game of Thrones, not The Long Night, so it makes logic sense that the conclusion of the show revolves around The Iron Throne. But I don't really care who wins, as long as House Stark survives. 

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Just watched the Burlington Bar reactions to S8, E3.  I'm still really happy with that episode. So fun and lots of good moments. Going back through the series so much of it was set up along the way.

 

After so many horrible, tragic, awful moments it is really nice to get some closure and victory in a straight up good vs evil battle. That was over an hour of really entertaining television. I didn't lose interest at any time.

 

Good stuff.

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Cavalry is an offensive weapon, Dothraki cavalry in particular.  You can't perform complicated 'held cavalry charges' or flanking strikes in the dark against an enemy you can't see with unknown numbers.  The only option you are left with is an opening charge.

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Thing is, every surviving Stark has had a role to play. Each role was critical to the success of the motto of House Stark: Winter Is Coming
Arya: Assassin
Sansa: Politician and leader of The North
Jon: Warrior, ranger and discovery that NK & WWs are real. 
Bran: 3-eye Raven, intel agent. 

 

From the beginning, if you take these 4 Starks and plotted their journey away from Winterfell, you 1) leave Winterfell open, and thus for capture, and 2) the need to retake it as 'Winter is Coming' ie The Long Night. 

 

In order to achieve the above aims, Ned & Robb have to die, Rickon as well, thus means Winterfell is taken. In order to retake Winterfell, and make it the North's last stand against the Night King, how do these 4 surviving Starks accomplish this? What skill sets do they need? 

 

For Sansa, a politician, as she becomes the Lady of Winterfell. As politician she enlists the help of the Tully's (her mum's House) as allies. To become this politician she needs to be educated, and that means experience. She observes two of Westeros' exemplar politicians Cersei & Littlefinger. 

 

For Jon, it is about learning who the "Winter" that is coming. Thus his journey is to The Wall as a Nights Watchman. His journey is also to become a leader of this area which means uniting the different communities together. So Jon becomes a warrior, a ranger, and a military leader. 

 

Arya is more simpler. She was conceived right off the bat to be the opposite of Sansa, thus Arya is a tomboy who practiced archery then learn sewing and other ladylike duties. Her journey was always to become the "ninja" assassin to end the Night King. To do it, she needed to encounter the Faceless Ones and become No One. 

 

And Bran, Bran needed to become the next 3-eyed raven. Thus his journey starts when Jamie pushes him out that tower window. Bran's Intel was what saved The North. 

 

Ergo, the politician, ranger, assassin, 3-eyed raven, needed to become these occupations, and then come back to Winterfell--after they retook it of course. All of it is seemingly destined to happen, as the end was known, so one just needs to work backwards. 

 

It just seems perfect. Almost too perfect. 

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11 hours ago, Starlord said:

Cavalry is an offensive weapon, Dothraki cavalry in particular.  You can't perform complicated 'held cavalry charges' or flanking strikes in the dark against an enemy you can't see with unknown numbers.  The only option you are left with is an opening charge.

 

If I was the PC in charge I'd go with the option to dismount and fight from the walls. I'd rather insist upon it.

 

But the real reason they charged off into the darkness to die was extra-diagetic. It made for a great shot and helped set the scene for a very desperate, very bleak battle.

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