I'm talking specifically about the villains. I mean any garbage Hollywood villain manages to get a casualty or two or rule somewhere at some point, but what about their ultimate goals. What was their success rate in that regard? Barely any. They all failed one by one. Where is the nuance in that?
NK, Cersei, Ramsay, Tywin, Joffry, Baelish, The Mountain, Walder Frey, Bolton, High Sparrow, even the mini villains like Tanner, Locke, Craster, Ser Alisser, Viserys or Daenerys herself when she turned into one, they all had one thing in common, they utterly failed in what they wanted to achieve the most and they died in what felt like very karmic story like ways.
Compare that to some of Marvel's best villains for instance. Thanos, Zemo, Killmonger, Pierce. All of them were at least to some degree successful and what they accomplished had lasting consequences. Not just casualties.
How is the bittersweet ending anything new here. In the end it was just another traditional story like all the others despite all the pretence.
So for it to not be traditional you just wanted the villains to win? That does not sound like a very interesting subversion. I could make a theory that says that Victarion Greyjoy is Azor Ahai but that would not be in keeping with the spirit of the story, which is anti-war and anti-violence. It's a fictional story with a moral core at the centre, which is why the villain does not get to win, as Martin's not a nihilist. Cersei got the throne she wanted and held onto it...until she didn't because Martin understands a) her character flaws and b) that people never hold on to power forever anyway. Ramsay's goals just entail hurting people physically and psychologically because he gets off on it. He was pretty successful in doing that and it had an impact beyond his death too when you look at Theon. Arya and Sansa have generally been changed forever by the horrors they witnessed and those are somehow not lasting consequences?
There are dictators who remained in power till they died. Stalin, Mao never paid the price for what they had done for example. Having like Dorne or something be ruled by a dictator would not have been nihilist but realist in the history sense of the word. That said, it remains much more realist than most other shows/films.
Also Drogon
is still alive, that's like finally impeaching DT but, then Bannon disappears with the nuclear bombs.
I think the fact that all the villains are eventually defeated has to do with the arc of Dany.
She freed Westeros, and maybe it was impossible to free Westeros without someone ready to do the dirty work. After all, in 1943/44/45, most of Europe was freed from Nazis by Stalin. Dany's success make her arc more ambiguous, and Jon's decision less right. The ambiguity of their dynamic in the last episode would be lost if Dany wasn't on the verge of finally implementing "the greater good" all over the world.
Meh, I give this video a C- for effort but it is waayyy too reliant on memes that she found on reddit and she usually brings a lot more interesting analysis to the table and does not rely on blogs with out-of-context or quotes as her main sources and she makes some rather weird unfounded insinuations in this too (for example, how would she know that they decided to have 6 episodes in season 8 just so they could get to Star Wars when they have been talking about the 73 hour movie for literally years at this stage? I think the documentary that was released post-season 8 contradicts this assertion too). This makes her analysis seem rather sloppy and I usually expect better from her, even when I don't agree with her assessments all the time. The quality of this video, as a result, is rather disappointing, as it's mainly a simplistic recapitulation of the plot with added zingers. It's also weird that the people who hate the show have adopted Robert Baratheon as their mascot when the character represents tons of problems in both the show and the books. I also find it rather rich that she made a video on death of the author a while ago and now clings to old D&D quotes like they are absolutely essential to engaging with, and interpreting, the material.
Meh, I give this video a C- for effort but it is waayyy too reliant on memes that she found on reddit and she usually brings a lot more interesting analysis to the table and does not rely on blogs with out-of-context or quotes as her main sources and she makes some rather weird unfounded insinuations in this too (for example, how would she know that they decided to have 6 episodes in season 8 just so they could get to Star Wars when they have been talking about the 73 hour movie for literally years at this stage? I think the documentary that was released post-season 8 contradicts this assertion too). This makes her analysis seem rather sloppy and I usually expect better from her, even when I don't agree with her assessments all the time. The quality of this video, as a result, is rather disappointing, as it's mainly a simplistic recapitulation of the plot with added zingers. It's also weird that the people who hate the show have adopted Robert Baratheon as their mascot when the character represents tons of problems in both the show and the books. I also find it rather rich that she made a video on death of the author a while ago and now clings to old D&D quotes like they are absolutely essential to engaging with, and interpreting, the material.
Triggered by any sort of criticism regarding this series? It’s just an opinion. Very highly regarded one but still.
Meh, I give this video a C- for effort but it is waayyy too reliant on memes that she found on reddit and she usually brings a lot more interesting analysis to the table and does not rely on blogs with out-of-context or quotes as her main sources and she makes some rather weird unfounded insinuations in this too (for example, how would she know that they decided to have 6 episodes in season 8 just so they could get to Star Wars when they have been talking about the 73 hour movie for literally years at this stage? I think the documentary that was released post-season 8 contradicts this assertion too). This makes her analysis seem rather sloppy and I usually expect better from her, even when I don't agree with her assessments all the time. The quality of this video, as a result, is rather disappointing, as it's mainly a simplistic recapitulation of the plot with added zingers. It's also weird that the people who hate the show have adopted Robert Baratheon as their mascot when the character represents tons of problems in both the show and the books. I also find it rather rich that she made a video on death of the author a while ago and now clings to old D&D quotes like they are absolutely essential to engaging with, and interpreting, the material.
Triggered by any sort of criticism regarding this series? It’s just an opinion. Very highly regarded one but still.
Lol, even highly regarded people can mess up once in a while. If it was well-argued then I would be more positive about it but she essentially just recaps the plot with snarky memes she found on reddit and I definitely expect better from her. She essentially reverted back to her NostalgiaChick days (making jokes while recapping the plot) and I thought she'd grown past that sort of nonsense.
This video not only flies in the face of what she said in her video about the death of the author theory, it is essentially her merely parroting a lot of what she found on reddit once she read the spoilers, which is often bad faith criticism and ad hominem attacks on the showrunners. I don't really care that Benioff thinks that themes are for 8th-grade book reports (he's right but that's beside the point) because I don't care most of the time what the author says about his own work. I look at the work itself so bringing out old quotes and acting like that's the end of the discussion is kinda superficial criticism. She usually brings more to the table than this.
She clearly cared a lot about the show and so her disappointment and her frustration with what she got shines through but it's also a very shallow, surface-level interpretation of the story. She also makes some weird, unsubstantiated accusations against the showrunners. Like, how does she know we only got 6 episodes because they were in a hurry to move to Star Wars when 73-75 hours for this show were what they publicly talked about since around season 2 or 3? How does she know they were lazy or didn't care about their own show? Or how does a clip of an actor changing facial expression somehow indicate that they hate the show they worked on for years? I also really hope the second part uses better sources than blog posts and reddit to make her points because so far I am not really convinced by what I saw here.
Suck it hbo.