#the writers keep saying he's the closest thing to joffrey lmao

[homielander]

I hate that they made aegon a rapist (but in some episodes, they tried to give him depth and show how he suffers from his position). it's already not easy being team green, and we still have to pass as apologists, when that shit didn't even happen in the books and no one in that book it's a nice person. it literally is such a gratuitous scene.

me too🥲

aegon was said to get handsy with maidservants in the book but that was the extent of it (as long as we're discounting mushroom, whom i believe should almost always be discounted). i guess i can see why they would put it in there based on that, but they made the adaptational choice to whitewash pretty much every character except aegon, which would be baffling if it weren't very clear what their intention was. i think aegon may actually be the only character who is better in the book than the show. and he actually had one of the more interesting arcs in the book so it's depressing all around

if they were going to make aegon a worse guy than in the book, then they should have at least made rhaenyra book accurate, because making one of them a fundamentally better person than the other undermines the futility of the dance. but i do respect that they wanted to make rhaenyra more likable (though i would say this stretched too far with the erasure of every canonical flaw she had in 1.10 and the white hart) so the easy solution to preserve that theme was to not have aegon casually commit atrocities that are so cartoonish they're not even shown on screen. obviously then they wouldn't have been able to market a proto daenerys to audiences but maybe we'd have an interesting story idk

[renaissansu]

In another life with maybe 3 seasons more instead of just this 1 or perhaps a change of the past few seasons, i could understand D&D's justifications for everything happening. But with the way it is, there are no stakes- nothing to fight for, no one to support or hate aside from the fact that we've known them for the past 8 seasons, no change in character development, no reason to care who sits on the iron throne- left at this point. I don't even care about watching the final episode except for the fact that I've been this invested for 9 years that I can't not watch it.

Lemme just summarize the three people done the dirtiest this past ep. (warning, it’s long yall) maybe i should put a keep reading thing here LMAO

1. Jaime - Jaime has always been one of my favorite characters.  In the beginning, he was this king-slayer whose reputation he both embraced and deconstructed through his wittiness and apathy toward anything regarding the iron throne.  He goes as far as to sit on it just to prove how much he doesn’t want it.  He unraveled the expectations of knighthood and chivalry while somehow being the luscious caricature of a knight.  I liked that he never really took anything too seriously except for perhaps one could dub his “fatal flaw,” his love for Cersei, which was both disgusting and intriguing.  But, throughout the seasons we see Jaime as a much more complex man than the lovesick man he is when he pushes Bran out the window.  He’s also the only source of kindness among monsters who treated Tyrion as a monster, he’s capable of (AT THE VERY LEAST) showing affection and care toward Brienne while simultaneously respecting her as a woman and a knight, he feels remorse toward pushing Bran and sympathizes with Catelyn when she loses Ned, and so many more small examples.  He’s the type of character who’s done so many shitty things but he’s not a shitty person, though he perhaps believes he is.  It was as if his exchange with Tyrion and him killing Euron was meant to remind us of that only to mimic Bran’s words to Theon or Arya’s “thank you” to Sandor.  As if he, like the other two, are redeemed in their misdeeds and die as good men.  However, Jaime dying after going back to Cersei is not a way of showing how our fatal flaw consumes us or that people don’t always change.  It is not even an attempt at shock value because it’s so obvious that it’s his flaw.  It’s simply just boring and an erasure of his character arc.  He’s not even the one to convince Cersei to ring the bells and surrender... what was even the point of tyrion telling him that besides to tell the audience of what the bells mean... like... we woulda been knew by him saying the same thing to Daenerys.  Somehow Jaime saying “Cersei always called me the stupidest lannister” is supposed to ignore all of the other Good Things he’s done and just say, oh he’s just a stupid fool in love with the wrong woman.  WHICH HE IS NOT.

2. Cersei - Unlike Jaime who only loves Cersei, Cersei, as many in the show have reiterated and BEAT WITH A CLUB this season, only cares about her children.  This was what made her such an empowering (though immoral ofc) character as she stood behind Joffrey’s cruelty and transformed into a monster herself as Tommen and Myrcella die, leaving her childless.  Cersei is cruel, methodical, and in some ways trigger happy, but she’s not afraid to die (like when she’s about to murder-suicide herself and tommen in s2).  Of course no one wants to die, especially a mother about to have a child with the only man she ever loved and the only man who has given her children, but her screaming “I don’t want to die” at the end of the episode was so ludicrous i actually laughed.  You’re meant to hate cersei, and we got that throughout the past 4 seasons.  She’s a Bad Woman and a Bad Queen.  We get it.  She needed to be this powerful force in order for it to make sense that she’s the final boss so to speak, not the Ice King (don’t even get me started on how rushed that ending was... but yaaaas Arya is That Bitch).  The series has been building to her defeat and the reclamation of the iron throne... only to be thwarted in her quick death with the love of her life Jaime.  I personally didn’t need her to be killed by Arya or like idk stabbed in utter anguish by Jaime (though that woulda been more fulfilling tbh), but her death was so... anti-climactic.  I wasn’t shocked, I wasn’t satisfied.  I was just left with, oh Cersei dies because Danerys wants the city to burn.  

For Cersei and Jaime both I question why make characters so complex and tortured, only to kill them without reason or stake? This is not like Catelyn and Robb whose deaths were both shocking AND vital to the plot.

3. Daenerys - Let me preface this by saying I’m a Sansa stan, take that as you will.  I’ve never been a huge fan of Daenerys, though I love her character design and totally understand why so many people love her.  Sansa and Daenerys to me could have been the greatest companions to each other, but instead they became rivals.  Sansa is wary of outsiders and justifiably so, but she’s not spiteful anymore than any other westerosi toward the Targaryens.  Her dislike of Daenerys seems to function only to warn the audience that Dany may not be as good as we think and I’m not buying it.   Much like Sansa, she starts as a naive girl who’s thrown into these shitty environments by men forced to adapt and overcome.  Both of them grow up very quickly to realize that the world isn’t the pretty box of fine silks and handmaidens they grew up with.  But, unlike Sansa, I personally never thought that Daenerys lost all of her innocence.  Where Sansa has grown hard and unforgiving, Dany wants freedom above all else- though somtimes perhaps this came in the form of revenge.  She’s fought for the underdogs, she’s the breaker of chains, the mother of dragons, and she’s literally EARNED everything she owns.  She maybe a Targaryen, but her position of power was NOT inherited like her mad father’s and her recent ancestors.  I just can’t for one second fathom why it’s supposed to make sense that she’s becoming a mad queen just because of the fact she’s a Targaryen, especially since Jon is also half-targaryen and like only her father was a very very bad ruler (i mean lets be real have we forgotten how bad Robert or Joffrey were at this point and they AREN’T targaryens).  To me, Daenerys is still fighting because she wants and knows she can challenge/redeem the misdeeds of her father.  She wants to return the stasis.

In some ways, sure, her becoming a Mad Queen only helps to boost Jon’s true right to the throne and becomes yet another obstacle in his way to getting there.  Looking at Dany’s character, I can somewhat understand why they went into portraying her as becoming a mad queen. However, I really don’t find it making sense to have her turn immediately just because she wants revenge for two of her closest advisers/friends (one of which is not even killed by a Westerosi).   Daenerys has been that character to me that I love because she’s powerful and unapologetic, but I have sensed a bit of unease in her naivety of sorts (understandable considering she’s had like no positive representations of what a queen or king does i.e. only having her father or robert to go by) in her dealing with the masters over the unsullied and burning men at qarth.  To me, those are way more bigger indications of her subtle character flaws as a queen than her killing her brother like what??? if i were her i’d kill her brother after viserys said “i’d let the whole khalasar and their horses fuck you” LIKE???? WHAT??? Emilia Clarke does an amazing job of portraying Daenerys’ pain at being in love but unloved, and utterly alone in a foreign land.  It’s just so dirty and disheartening to see yet another strong (in all definitions) female character subjected to demonizing emotions which will be her downfall.  I mean, I’ll even agree that I never really saw her to be the one sitting on the iron throne. To me she doesn’t even need to be on the throne to have a good ending because she’s been a great conquer and not a queen.  We never got to really see what happens to the cities she frees in Essos beyond providing her with an army.  But, can’t she be the one person in GOT to realize that winning the throne is one thing and ruling it is another? She could have understood the one thing that Robert Baratheon failed to recognize.  Can’t I just imagine Dany yielding the surrender of kings landing or something and defeating Cersei with Jon only to have an Arya “that’s not me” moment while about to sit on the throne and Jon becomes the king IDK (i’m looking to you LOTR)  ANYTHING besides what’s happening to her...

I think what bothers me the most is that I don’t even have to watch D&D’s explanation at the end of each episode because I can tell exactly why they think everything they’re doing is good, even though it’s such bad writing.  I don’t want to hate on GOT because I do think that the show is overall great/deserving of its success and has well-written parts.  I respect all of the actors/actresses, crew members, writers and episode directors, even D&D for bring us this amazing show, I just feel slighted that things could have been so much better if we were offered perhaps more seasons to develop these arcs or were better leading up to these moments. 

TL;DR GOT has been great to me these past 9 years, but I’m ready for it to be over

but also...