re: Am I the only one pulling for the Night King?

It is rare that Straws and I agree... But yeah... This episode was full of pure dumbfrickery... not the least of which was the ships/dragons scene. If the ship in the front can see your dragon, there is a low probability that you missed seeing the entire fricking fleet. Even assuming you did and 3 shots got off before you spotted them... rage flying straight at the ships that already sniped one dragon and they seemingly can't hit you might be one of the dumbest things we've seen in the series to date. Then the seemingly endless supply of bolts and retarded fast reloading of the dragon ballistas... shooting on a low trajectory at Dany's boats... this would mean that it was all being done from maybe the 4-6 forward ships of Euron's fleet... since everything was fired at damn near parallel to the ground... and you can't shoot through your own fleet.

Fly around the ships, burn them all from behind given that they would likely not want to shoot through their own sails/masts (and it would make aiming difficult)... attack at night from directly above... So many options that don't include the shite that we were given.

So do a lot of you just avoid the boards like MTV and the OT? I mean there’s tons of threads on the MTV board with people that would definitely agree with you.

Tiger Rant Suuuuuuucks.

Capital S, lotta U's.

I don't know why, but I've never felt drawn to that side of the site, prefer the OT of SECR.

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rage flying straight at the ships that already sniped one dragon and they seemingly can't hit you might be one of the dumbest things we've seen in the series to date.

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That pissed me off.

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the seemingly endless supply of bolts and retarded fast reloading of the dragon ballistas

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frickers were on full automatic

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That scene is just one of the worst of the show, and now it's starting to make more sense from someone I saw critiquing the show and once you see this you can't stop seeing it.

d&d are lazy and if it's too difficult to show, they will do whatever they can to avoid it.

The Dothraki charge, her dragon "needing" to die, suddenly getting rid of Ghost (with no formal goodbye), Bran having...a pretty good goddamn power but never uses it.

How did Bronn get into the city? Where did all of the trees go? Where were all the dead? What about the hills outside of King's Landing? The body of the dead dragon? The sea battle that ensued? I could literally go on and on about these two lately.

Where did all of the explanation for those things go? In the end, the small things make for the best immersion. That's why it was fun in the beginning. The conversations took place in settings that mattered. In this, they just really want to get the frick out of Dodge as soon as possible.

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Agree with all of your points. I love the show but they’ve really sputtered down the stretch. Killing the dragon the way they did had to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Followed closely by not using your human UAV in bran that can scout ahead and not sending Arya to assassinate people in King’s Landing. I mean Cersei is letting literally EVERYONE into the city. It’s just frustrating how they’ve pizzled out the writing coming down to the end.

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In the season 8 opening there's been this showing a large dragon flying with 3 baby dragons:

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Especially with the comet showing, the big dragon could be Dany and the 3 smaller ones being her “children”.

Maybe Euron is surprised because Drogon caught them off guard.

I just don’t think they have time to introduce something like that now.

So I snagged this from Reddit and to be fair, it's a valid point as to why the writing has suffered:

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David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were hired to adapt a book, not to write its conclusion - They are skilled at adapting book content for television, as is clearly evident from seasons 1-4, but once they ran out of content, they had no choice but to write their own with only breadcrumbs left by GRRM. We can see that their writing is below average to say the least.

The show was greenlit with the expectation that it will not surpass the books - When the show started filming in 2009, we were just two years away from ADWD, and the first season aired in the same year. No one in their right mind would have guessed that the book writing progress would slow down considerably. The show was supposed to slowly sail through books (which it had done). TWOW and ADOS would be obviously released before the show ran out of content.

HBO management had a say in the show's production - Some characters, namely Bronn, were included more in the show because HBO saw Q ratings for the character and forced the production to include the character more. I think it wouldn't be far-fetched to assume that HBO marketing had their hand in many more writing decisions. Maybe most of them were minor, but who knows at this point.

GRRM wrote himself into a corner - with a story this expansive and large, it's no surprise he is having trouble bringing all these characters and their standalone story arcs to a satisfying conclusion. What could be considered the hardest part of any story, the ending was left to DnD, who, as we can see, aren't great at writing stories, let alone write the conclusion to A Song of Ice and Fire.

The show's target audience changed and influenced the direction of the show - This show is arguably one of the most popular shows of all time and the most trending thing on TV right now. Back in Season 1, a majority of the audience were people who were either: a) ASOIAF fans or b) fans of fantasy. Since then, the epic battle scenes, subverted expectations and tits on TV brought in a large audience that didn't care much for worldbuilding, lore or the name of the Lord of Storm's End. They cared about TITS, chopping off heads, dragons breathing fire and suspense. What has once been just one element of the story became its sole component - most of S7 and S8 is insane CGI scenes, explosions, battle sequences and edge-of-the-seat action. Slower episodes like 1 and 2 have garnered a mixed response from the more casual side of the fanbase. This can be most clearly seen when comparing IMDB episode ratings, newspaper critic reviews, as well as from the general fan response on social media.

D&D shot themselves in the foot when they decided to end with Season 8 - HBO themselves offered D&D funding for more standard-length seasons, but D&D declined because they cannot conjure meaningful storytelling for 10-20 more episodes. What we can see now is a concoction of GRRM's breadcrumbs and piss-poor D&D storytelling adhesive that tries to hold those crumbs together. Not a very good duo.

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It's a fair assessment, I see both sides. But either way, people are talking about Game of Thrones.

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Agree with all of your points. I love the show but they’ve really sputtered down the stretch. Killing the dragon the way they did had to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Followed closely by not using your human UAV in bran that can scout ahead and not sending Arya to assassinate people in King’s Landing. I mean Cersei is letting literally EVERYONE into the city. It’s just frustrating how they’ve pizzled out the writing coming down to the end.

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The worst part is that people (including in this thread) are trying to say things like: "The Source Material ran out and they just did what they could." No, they are quite clearly bad writers, just to sum it up into one post.

Bronn has no reason to think his extortion will go rewarded, that Dany is just going to install him for...funsies? There's no reason for him to think that once he's in a throne room Tyrion won't say: "Oh yeah, that guy threatened your Hand (me) and his brother so that he could get High Garden". This isn't a problem of Source Material, this is a problem of just excruciatingly bad writing -- putting a conflict where none was needed.

Bronn also says he's done fighting but would have no problem picking off Dany's officers one by one. So, this makes one ask the question: Why not do that to Cersei's men instead, since you now have an investment in Dany winning? This is gaaaaarbage writing. GARBAGE.

Bran, having the capacity to warg into animals is left to not do anything whatsoever (as you pointed out). They didn't use him to at least scout the Night King's Army, they didn't put him on a boat to scout far, far ahead in any way, and it brings me to my next point:

Why was Dany in the sea at all? It's worthless, she wants to fight. Why not bring your entire force by land and completely negate the fleet of Euron? You have two dragons, a Warg and a similarly sized military, there is literally no reason to go by sea.

Why does Dany just completely abandon her fleet to be decimated along with all of her upper management, especially after the first volley and I guess magical cover from the rock the Greyjoy fleet was using? The one she could use to circumvent and attack from the rear?

Why doesn't Cersei kill her younger brother outside of the castle walls when...she JUST SENT A frickING ASSASSIN TO KILL HIM? She's completely apathetic to what the world thinks of her (as evidenced multiple times) and has the enemy commander a hundred yards out in front of dragon killing ballistae with Dany's military still miles and miles away, but doesn't pull the trigger on either of them?

Weak. Sauce.

They don't show the reactions of Arya or Sansa when Jon tells them he's a goddamn Targaryen? We don't see what Sansa tells Tyrion (we have to wait until some scenes later)? Jon doesn't have a goodbye with Ghost?

Arya says "We needed her dragons" and seconds later says "I don't need allies". Like holy frick this is so bad.

It has nothing to do with Source Material being their downfall outside of: These two idiots are literally just hack writers who have been coasting on the coattails far too long.

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it's bite size and very easy for your low-operating mind to consume.

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we all know the depth of your intellect and personal opinions are as shallow as Season 8's plot.

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"Hey everybody, look how much smarter I am than everybody"
You must be a regular on the poli board, that's the only thing they can ever say to anybody that doesn't fall exactly in line with their group think circlejerk

Fyi, anybody who's actually smart doesn't need to insult another person's intelligence just to try and make their point. It only turns other people off your point, even if your opinion is valid.

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it's much easier to just pretend like these two aren't terrible writers but they're just doing what they can with the material that they have

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Literally on this page I already said this season has been full of lazy writing and agreed with a post that explicitly said D&D are bad writers, but go ahead and keep making yourself look like an insatiable a-hole. People like you who are only looking for things to bitch and moan about and nothing else are just fricking annoying, end of story. Anybody who's ever been to any party with you probably hates you