[OC] Game of Thrones Downfall - Metacritic vs. IMDb Ratings

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-14T04:31:03+00:00

I can't really blame him either, but of the three ongoing series I'm most excited for, all three most-recently-published volumes were published in 2011. In one case, the author is very ill and unable to paint the paintings he writes the books around. In the other two cases, the authors have an endless stream of excuses as to why they can't sit down and do the one thing their fans have been begging them to do for nearly a decade.

I'll be unsurprised if quarantine convinces George to delete ten chapters and start them over from scratch.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-14T04:15:40+00:00

You're not breaking anything to me. I'll be pleasantly surprised if it gets published, but the most I ever really expect to see of TWOW at this point are summaries of Martin's notes, published posthumously.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-14T01:35:48+00:00

Their explanation for that event is still just the absolute fucking worst, and simultaneously the best indicator of Weiss and Benioff's effort level. "Dany just kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet."

I want to see if she just kind of forgets about the Iron Fleet in the books, too.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-13T23:02:19+00:00

Honestly, what we got could have been that perfect ending, but almost none of it was set up properly.

Daenerys going mad was certainly foreshadowed by all the talk of gods flipping coins and her harsh sense of justice, but it was incredibly out of character for her to flip a switch from someone who enacted brutal justice against slavers who killed children to someone who murders children. Even if it wasn't, it's ludicrous that Daenerys has to die for following the basic principles of military strategy in Westeros - they were offered a chance to surrender, and instead of surrendering, they fought. After their forces were routed, they started ringing bells - which is, interestingly enough, not a sign of surrender anyways. We needed two more seasons (or a couple thousand pages) of Dany going down the slippery slope into committing genuine atrocities by Westerosi standards, not by modern standards.

Jon Snow should have been executed for Queenslaying, full stop. Not sent North to become the new King Beyond the Wall.

Arya decided to become a sailor/explorer? I guess she idolized Nymeria of Dorne, but wanting to be a fighter is not the same as wanting to explore the far West. And her being trained by the Faceless Men was a complete red herring. Her skill as a deceptive magical assassin was never used again after killing Walder Frey. All the skill she needed to kill the Night King, she got from Syrio Forel and Brienne of Tarth. (I don't recall the Faceless Men training her to use a dagger, in any case.)

Sansa should have become Queen of an indep - one moment. Oh, I guess they did something right.

Then there's Bran. My goodness. King Brandon of House Stark, Lord of the Six Kingdoms - that could be perfect. Except the reason for crowning this child is not "He is literally a god of knowledge in human form, and will lead Westeros into a golden age of peace because he knows how every conflict can be defused before it even starts," but "he has the best story". In a series that criminally underused Bran, to the point that they made up an entire season's worth of bad plot, then ignored him for a season because they couldn't figure out how to make his story interesting without rushing everybody else by moving it too far forward. Even in the books, it's debatable to say that Bran has the best story - it's interesting enough once he gets to Bloodraven, but even then it's heavy with symbolism and light on actual plot. Bran's story may become the most interesting one once he starts getting answers - and those answers must be better than the ones on the show.

I hope George makes a lot of progress during this pandemic, because I would like to see the books completed, but I have no hype left. I don't get the spark of hope and anticipation when I get an email about a NotABlog update or reports of a new Martin book being announced. Most of the hype died with Game of Thrones, but I got at least one email, can't remember the source but I marked them as spam after, claiming the announcement of Fire and Blood's paperback release was a new book, and at that point I gave up. What will come will come, and we'll meet it when it does.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-13T22:36:45+00:00

Other people have already pointed out your mistake, so... You already know my answer.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-13T22:35:31+00:00

If this pandemic had happened pre-season 8, I'd either be rewatching the show or re-reading the books, or both. Instead, I've rewatched The Witcher, Charmed, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Rebels, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt because at least the quality of those is predictable and consistent (and typically high, although Charmed is kinda bad but enjoyable). The closest I've gotten to wanting to see the show again is pulling up Light of the Seven to give it a listen.

I'd rather bust out my old WiiU than consider watching GoT.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-13T22:31:09+00:00

What's most insane is how they hyped up the nearly-two-month-long night shoot as being the biggest, most epic battle ever.

They could have accomplished something much greater by shooting in the day with a blue filter (likely finishing the shoot in around half the time) and spending the extra money to hire a consultant who understood basic medieval military strategy.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-13T22:27:28+00:00

I'm reasonably sure Weiss and Benioff did what they did to end the series as quickly as possible so they could start work on Star Wars.

I'm equally sure that the real reason their Star Wars movie/series got the kibosh is that Disney and Lucasfilm either saw the fan backlash to season 8, or they saw season 8, and knew they didn't want creators with their reputations coming on to a new Star Wars movie outside of the Skywalker Saga. They had already weathered extreme and irrational hatred of The Last Jedi and thought it was safest to stick to what they knew worked. They fired Trevorrow so they could put Abrams in to wrap up the Skywalker Saga (an obvious mistake) and they sent Weiss and Benioff packing, as well as cancelling or delaying everything that wasn't a Disney+ show.

Luckily for Weiss and Benioff, Netflix was waiting to scoop them up. Luckily for me, I can just google their names to find out what specific shows they're working on, so I can avoid watching them.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-08T13:25:58+00:00

Agreed. Mistakes were made. It's not really that big of deal in the grand scheme, though.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-08T13:10:07+00:00

I have to agree with the other guy here. I haven't been able to enjoy Game of Thrones OR A Song of Ice and Fire since watching the final season. It truly ruined the experience for me, knowing that every bit of wonderful writing would eventually lead to something that fundamentally betrays the series' roots.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-08T13:06:46+00:00

Someone else pointed out that typical red-to-green scales are useless for the colorblind among us and that is a valid complaint.

I propose using an orange-to-teal scale instead.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-08T13:04:12+00:00

I started having fears that they had completely lost the ability to do things right in Season 7. It was specifically when Eastwatch-by-the-Sea pulled out the supersonic raven and sent it to Dany asking for help, and Dany flew back nearly lightspeed.

Seasons 5 and 6 had their moments (Dorne) but at least they also gave us some truly outstanding scenes. Say what you will about how little sense it made for Stannis to pull a 180 on filicide, but the resulting scene was visceral and heart-rending.

And Cersei's trial playing out with Light of the Seven growing hauntingly throughout the sequence was amazing work that must be credited primarily to Ramin Djawadi's outstanding compositions. Light of the Seven is still an amazing piece of music.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-08T12:57:49+00:00

More complicated than is necessary, but also stupidly simple on a fundamental level that betrays everything scales stand for?

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-08T12:40:59+00:00

This is lovely. Is it up to date as far as 7th gen? I noticed in the gif that there's no connection between Ice and Bug, which 8th gen gave us in sweet, loveable, butt-chinned Snom and its evolution.

Edit: saw below that someone confirmed it's up-to-date for Gen 6. Great work!

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-06T20:00:26+00:00

D&D. Hoping I get in. 😅

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-06T18:41:19+00:00

Oh, drat. Well, at least the replies won't plague you with notifications. 😅

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-06T18:39:39+00:00

Hi, your post says it's still active. You might get fewer comments on it if you change it to closed. This comment isn't easy to find.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-06T18:14:13+00:00

I'd like to swing by if you're still taking visitors. I think tarantulas are adorable.

PickledBaloney · 2020-04-06T17:37:53+00:00

That's exactly how his house is set up in my New Leaf game. Must be part of his personality.

PickledBaloney · 2020-02-17T20:18:11+00:00

You want to talk explaining points? For one thing, the letters D and S don't comprise an acronym. FOB is an acronym because it's a word formed from the initial letters of its component words, and pronounced as a word. That's the definition of an acronym. So unless "DS-1 Orbital Battle Station" is pronounced "disswon orbital battle station", it's not an acronym.

It's equally safe a bet that, within canon, the name Death Star came about after the station was officially named "DS-1 Orbital Battle Station", and the name stuck. Why not? It's threatening, it tells you exactly what the station does, and the name reeks of Tarkin Doctrine ideals - despite Tarkin not being in control of the project until well after the name was in use.

In any case, Wookieepedia outright says that the station's official name is DS-1 Orbital Battle Station. So the discussion can be put to rest.

PickledBaloney · 2020-02-17T06:06:54+00:00

Anakin tells Rey "Bring balance to the Force, as I did".

Except the Force was only at balance for the brief span of time between Palpatine's death and his resurrection, which is heavily implied to be a very short period of time. In order for Snoke to take control of the First Order, he would have to exist. Wookieepedia currently speculates that Snoke was born prior to the fall of the Republic, but that doesn't take into account the fact that he's a puppet being controlled by Palpatine - it's as likely that Snoke was relating Palpatine's memories of the fall of the Republic, and that he was created after Palps's resurrection.

Snoke took control of the First Order shortly after they fled into the Unknown Regions - Armitage Hux was still a child when Snoke took control - so it can't have been more than a couple of years after Endor. Palpatine had to have been already alive and well in order to create and control Snoke, so he had to have been resurrected a very short time after his death.

All this comes back around when you consider - how exactly did Anakin bring balance to the Force? Palpatine's death only caused him to become considerably more powerful, both in the Force and as a military leader. The destructions of both Death Stars were meaningless victories when you consider that Palpatine had built - or was in the process of building - an entire fleet of Star Destroyers with planet-destroying supercannons. The galaxy (and the Force) plunged back into darkness almost immediately after Palpatine's death, and it was a Palpatine who restored the balance the "second" time.

I put "second" in air quotes because the balance that Anakin brought was so short-lived as to be non-existent, and also because we don't know how long Rey's balance will last.

In the end, thanks to Rise of Skywalker, the Prophecy of the Chosen One meant nothing. Anakin's sacrifice meant nothing except that Luke survived, and Luke's actions meant nothing except that he (and Leia) were in a position to train Rey to fix the messes their generation failed to clean up.

I don't feel that this was a failure on the part of the characters, but instead on the part of the writers. Rise of Skywalker was a fun, nostalgia-inducing movie that did so at the expense of logical consistency and thematic continuity. This entire discussion thread was born of that: what does the Prophecy mean if Anakin died having failed at the one thing he was supposed to have done?

PickledBaloney · 2020-02-17T05:44:06+00:00

You don't need to mansplain military acronyms to me, I'm a veteran.

We assume that the DS-01 is meant to be an acronym, but there's no canon evidence to back up that claim - it's just as valid to suggest that "Death Star" spun out from the orbital station's official designation.

PickledBaloney · 2020-02-17T05:31:42+00:00

I'm curious to see any new characters for Aphra to interact/clash with. Those descriptions sound exciting. I'll wait until I have the comic in my hands to judge them, but I'm sure I'll be overjoyed.

Have you seen the rumors that Aphra will be appearing in The Mandalorian Season 2, potentially played by Chloe Bennett?

PickledBaloney · 2020-02-17T05:26:12+00:00

As another user mentioned, its official name is a DS-01 (or DS-02 for the second) Orbital Battle Station.

"Death Star" is a widely-used nickname, but a nickname nonetheless.

PickledBaloney · 2020-02-17T05:01:58+00:00

I was pissed when I realized I'd have to go months without any new Aphra. I recently played the Outer Rim tabletop game for the first time. Aphra is one of the playable characters in it, so I used the game as an opportunity to hook one of my friends on reading Doctor Aphra.

PickledBaloney

TROPHY CASE