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Yes, I watched Game of Thrones, despite my utter dislike of anything related to zombies. The earlier seasons I even watched repeatedly, because of the dense story-telling that made every scene, even seemingly innocuous ones, plot-relevant - as in, skip it (or doze through it) and sometime down the line the story will cease to make complete sense.
In that regard, GoT's earlier seasons were an utterly, densely connected plot, forcing me to even endure the creepy white walker scenes (and yes, I still hate zombie tales; I don't even watch iZombie, which is about as candy-colored fluffy a Barbie-tale as undead tales can be), but GoT required the information in these scenes for it to make sense. A summary wouldn't have been enough! So I went through them as well - often with a very fine comb!
However, since season 7 - and partially already season 6 - the scenes are no longer connected, resulting in something resembling something I call "a lazy fanfic", i.e. one in which the author only bothers with the juicy scenes they want to play with and don't bother with character development and world building that make the juicy bits make sense. In most series that wouldn't stand out as much as it did in the case of GoT, which in its earlier seasons showed that it can be done MUCH BETTER in respect to character developments.
In that regard, Tyrion was pretty much abandoned at the end of season 6 and was almost a character-zombie in 7, Jaime still evolved in 7, but more or less devolved in 8, when he left one tyrant and didn't recognize the fire after that frying pan immediately afterwards. Most of the others... got some ending, not necessary one befitting the plot and character developments behind them - and that is what makes the last two seasons of GoT so dissatisfying - it is an ending befitting more to the characters who started the tale, not to the ones who lived through it.
Ironically, about the only character with consistent development from season 1 to the very end in both - symbolism *and* actions - is the one most people now complain about: Daenerys.
She began as utter victim. Her first kill was a mercy-death of a suffering monster that once was her husband (Drogo), then it was an assembly of people that were an existential threat to her (the Khals), she suffered for the first innocent collateral (the shepherd boy burnt to a crisp) and even tried to contain her weapons of mass destruction because of it (dragons in the dungeons of Meereen).
However, at the very least with the frying of the Tarlys, she crossed the line to the dark side for good: they weren't going to be for her, so they had to be against her and were therefore automatically toast, and so on...
That's a classic descent into fascism and all the people complaining about it coming totally unexpected have me worry about their ability to spot the same type of devolvement in real life, where it often doesn't come with indicative changes in costumes as it did in case of Daenerys (Hint: from the flimsy white shift of the innocent victim it becomes increasingly darker and harder, until in the end there is blood-red embroidery and aggressive armor).
In that regard, GoT's earlier seasons were an utterly, densely connected plot, forcing me to even endure the creepy white walker scenes (and yes, I still hate zombie tales; I don't even watch iZombie, which is about as candy-colored fluffy a Barbie-tale as undead tales can be), but GoT required the information in these scenes for it to make sense. A summary wouldn't have been enough! So I went through them as well - often with a very fine comb!
However, since season 7 - and partially already season 6 - the scenes are no longer connected, resulting in something resembling something I call "a lazy fanfic", i.e. one in which the author only bothers with the juicy scenes they want to play with and don't bother with character development and world building that make the juicy bits make sense. In most series that wouldn't stand out as much as it did in the case of GoT, which in its earlier seasons showed that it can be done MUCH BETTER in respect to character developments.
In that regard, Tyrion was pretty much abandoned at the end of season 6 and was almost a character-zombie in 7, Jaime still evolved in 7, but more or less devolved in 8, when he left one tyrant and didn't recognize the fire after that frying pan immediately afterwards. Most of the others... got some ending, not necessary one befitting the plot and character developments behind them - and that is what makes the last two seasons of GoT so dissatisfying - it is an ending befitting more to the characters who started the tale, not to the ones who lived through it.
Ironically, about the only character with consistent development from season 1 to the very end in both - symbolism *and* actions - is the one most people now complain about: Daenerys.
She began as utter victim. Her first kill was a mercy-death of a suffering monster that once was her husband (Drogo), then it was an assembly of people that were an existential threat to her (the Khals), she suffered for the first innocent collateral (the shepherd boy burnt to a crisp) and even tried to contain her weapons of mass destruction because of it (dragons in the dungeons of Meereen).
However, at the very least with the frying of the Tarlys, she crossed the line to the dark side for good: they weren't going to be for her, so they had to be against her and were therefore automatically toast, and so on...
That's a classic descent into fascism and all the people complaining about it coming totally unexpected have me worry about their ability to spot the same type of devolvement in real life, where it often doesn't come with indicative changes in costumes as it did in case of Daenerys (Hint: from the flimsy white shift of the innocent victim it becomes increasingly darker and harder, until in the end there is blood-red embroidery and aggressive armor).
no subject
Date: 2019-05-30 12:08 (UTC)From: (Anonymous)You are right though, the scene where she had the Tarys burned alive made it pretty clear that she went too far.
I also agree regarding the fanfic qualities of many of the later episodes. Didn't it used to take weeks if not months to get from Winterfell to king's landing? In the lat few seasons it seemed like people marched to and for within a couple of days.
Another frustrating this is that there were still good or grsat parts and episodes, like the second one of season 8. Watching all those charaters dealig nwith what they believe to be their last night alive was far more fascinating than the episode-long battle (one could barey see anyway).
Also I don'T encessarily mind where tose characters all ended up, but how. Jaimie's´devolution wasn't really motivated. Bran was made king for an iditoic reason.
Should Goerge MArtin ever dig his way out from the mountain of subplots he buried himself under (doubtful, I know), he could probably have those characters end up the same way, but make it organic. That was missing in the last two season and that's a shame. The show, the actors and the audience deserved better.
Ruth
no subject
Date: 2019-05-30 13:00 (UTC)From: