Be Excellent To Each Other

I thought the ‘Song Of Ice and Fire’ book bit was really hackneyed. I saw a reference to The Princess Bride and GoT yesterday, before I saw the episode, which didn’t make sense, but now totally does. I can’t find the tweet now, typically. Edit: because it was a screenshot made to look like a script, so not searchable.

I thought Briene might be pregnant, but I guess not.

Ser Brienne, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Makes sense.

But Pod the Rod? Kingsguard? Celibate? Unlikely.

She’s a lovely character. She probably ended up my favourite still-alive character by the final episode.

I think Tyrion is the thread that tied the whole show together from beginning to end, for me.

I don’t think Branflakes is that great a choice for leader. He doesn’t seem to have that much innate wisdom and his knowledge mostly comes from being able to see what is happening elsewhere, but that’s not going to help much in keeping the muffin running smoothly and the people content and working together, making dr idioms on taxis and the like. Bran! The people have no shoes! *wargs into a bird* CAAAW oh yeah! Meh. Also, he talks so slowly nothing will ever get done. Santa is an awful choice for queen of the north. She just wants to rule, not for policy but for the accolade. She is Boris Johnson.

The entire bit of "sure we'll just elect a King now" was far too pat. "I'll bend the knee, even though I, the Prince of Dorne, have the only army left in Westeros and come from a people so fiercely independent that we fought off Targaereons with dragons for 150 years." Also "we of the Iron Island will bend the knee even though the fucking North just fucked off and went independent and what the fuck, no-one said that was an option." Literally nothing about GoT's history would lead us to believe they're all gonna fall into line just like that.

Which leads us to the spin off show The Westeros Wing, where Tyrion tries to stitch together a fragile peace, occasionally helped by an opaque bit of wisdom from his boss and occasionally impeded by Bronn calling someone important a cunt to their face.

The events of the last episode really could have been an entire 6 episode arc.

That’s exactly what it was like. It was a bit... cringey. It just seemed so out of step with the rest of the writing.

Title Drops usually do: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TitleDrop

Although they've done this before: "When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die." That's also pretty clunky.

Related, two characters in the finale called Daenerys "Dany". That felt weird. Have they been doing that on-screen and I just haven't noticed? I thought it was a fan thing, not a show thing.

Jon says it on the boat after they steal a [zombie] and Jon’s recovering in the bed. She says something like “No one has called me Dany except, such and such” and he says “What about My Queen, instead.”

Or something like that.

I liked the Game of Thrones title drop. It was a badass threat from a Cersei on the rise.

I didn't mind the small council scene either. Nothing wrong with a bit of fanservice at the end. I was burned by the ends of Lost, Chuck and Castle in recent years, so a bit of silliness was a welcome treat.

Dire.

Some characters have been calling her Dany on and off for quite a while.

The work sweepstake I ran has turned out to not be as simple as expected
The question was, who will be sitting on the iron throne at the end of the series?
This is the message I sent out...

So… Here are the options as I see it…

1. Nobody : Technically correct, nobody is sitting on the iron throne, as the throne no longer exists. Probably been melted down into a ramp to make the throne room wheelchair accessible.
2. Bran : He is king, ruler of the 7… no 6… kingdoms. Fits in with the spirit of the sweepstake, i.e. he is the winner, but not technically correct.
3. Sansa : This is a real stretch, she is queen of the north and a ruler. Not on the iron throne, not overall ruler, but some pedantic sod wanted to bring her up as an option.
4. Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen,First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea,Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons : De facto queen when the iron throne was still a thing, she never actually sat down though, before it got melted.
5. Cersei : The last ruler to actually risk buttock cuts by physically sitting on the throne
6. We void the whole thing and give the cash to charity, as it could be argued that none of the above are unambiguously correct.


Which way would you vote?

Bran, obv.

6. Charity.

Failing that, Bran.

So, you ran a game which through the narrative turned out to be massively complicated?

7. Go and everyone ice creams with the money.

I have no idea what you are on about.

Yeah, that’d work, too.

Doughnuts was the original choice for option 6, but we have remote workers who joined in, so that isn't entirely fair.

Frame it as a life lesson

I might go and buy doughnuts anyway, as it's Tuesday.

I'll take the money.

Lewie... Sit down.

Do whatever the bookies are doing.

Well now I want this more than anything

I acknowledge my post was Crasterbait.

Couple more things that I remember -ing at...

The length of Jamies arm in the rubble.

Bizarre snow. Just enough to cover a Dragon.

Was it snow or was it drifting ash? I was completely confused about that. Related: it didn't seem to be at all wintry in the scenes set a few weeks later, so possibly ash.

Oh, that was definitely ash, it started up as stuff started burning.

Thematically, it had to be ash. But it look a *lot* like snow. I think maybe they were trying to match Dany's House of the Undying visions.

Too white and too much even coverage for ash, wouldn't fall like that in my mind....

And, according to a Vanity Fair article:



https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... the-throne

But also

Hmmm. The villagers were not dressed for it to be particularly cold, though, and I thought the Kind Slanging was a relatively warm area? It didn’t seem to make sense for it to be snow, whereas ash made sense in the action.

Fair enough. I admit it’s been a while since I was last in a city that was burned to the ground by an angry dragon, but you live near Blackpool, so

In the pilot for The Man In The High Castle, A Character is changing a wheel on his truck, and a policeman helps him.

"Is it snowing?" He asks, and the policeman smiles and explains "it's the cripples, they burn them at the crematoria on a Wednesday" or something like that.

The subtitles said it was snow.

The answer to the sweepstake question was "nobody". It's not even ambiguous.

Suppose you had put down £50 on Bran to be “on the Iron Throne at the end of the show” at 15/1 (odds you could have got during season seven.)

Would you now:-
(a) say “fair enough” and never bring it up again
(b) be in the bookie’s banging on the counter saying “look clearly ‘on the Iron Throne’ really meant ‘is the king’ and he is king and it doesn’t matter the actual chair is gone”

If your answer is (a), I don’t believe you. If your answer is (b), I submit you agree it is actually ambiguous after all.

There wasn't an Iron Throne. Bran wasn't on it. Just because I hypothetically feel entitled to something doesn't make it correct.

Depends on if you take the idiomatic meaning or the literal one, really.

Language. It means whatever it means.

It would probably depend on whether they'd offered "nobody" as an option.

What if Grim... was the bookie?

I think Sky Bet has some text saying that whoever ruled Westeros at the end was who they would pay out on.

That’s arguably not Bran either. He’s only king of the six kingdoms.

Our office sweepstake did, because that's what I wrote on it

Did you win?

You win, or you die.