Can’t wait to watch Littlefinger die tomorrow
:D :D :D :D :D
game of thrones spoilers
One of the many, many things that infuriate me about Shireen’s death is that the writers didn’t need to actually go through with it to make their point about Stannis valuing ambition over loved ones or whatever? The exact same point could have been made by having Shireen tied to the pyre but then her being saved by Selyse/Davos/a random act of God/literally anything
When Stannis Baratheon chose to have his daughter burned alive in last night’s Game of Thrones ‘The Dance of Dragons’ episode, fans were inconsolable. Showrunner Dan Weiss believes this only exposes their own hypocrisy however.
Following a dramatic scene in which Shireen realises her fate and her mother has a change of heart but fails to save her from the funeral pyre, EW caught up with Weiss and asked him: “How could you do that to Shireen?”
His reponse was to “flip the question”, and ask why we only care now, when Stannis has been burning people alive since season 2.
“It’s like a two-tiered system,” he said. “If a superhero knocks over a building and there are 5,000 people in the building that we can presume are now dead, does it matter? Because they’re not people we know. But if one dog we like gets run over by a car, it’s the worst thing we’ve ever seen. I totally understand where that visceral reaction comes from. I have that same reaction. There’s also something shitty about that. So instead of saying, ‘How could you do this to somebody you know and care about?’ maybe when it’s happening to somebody we don’t know so well, maybe then it should hit us all a bit harder.” (x)
So Shireen died… to prove a point. A point that doesn’t make much sense as show! Stannis hadn’t burnt children before. There is a difference, a massive difference, between murdering a child and a grown adult. Yes, I care deeply for Shireen and have an attachment to her that I don’t have for other characters.
But that is my right to have such an attachment. I am under no obligation to have an attachment to every single fictional character. I’m allowed to have favourites. Must I have the exact same emotional response all the time? What gives D&D the right to judge my very human response to an act of sheer evil?
This also implies that fans are absolutely fine with Stannis being okay with the burnings in previous seasons. Most people aren’t, they find it heinous and disgusting. A lot of Stannis fans are critical and aware, its not as if they are okay with everything he does. Burning people alive- just that concept is going to get an emotional reaction of out people
Weiss also holds fans in disdain, labelling the people who watch Game Of Thrones, wishing for the ‘hypocrisy’ to be exposed. How dare we have a problem with a little girl being burnt alive. I don’t watch this show for all the reasons about why I suck as a person.
No one was making them burn Shireen. They decided to. How the showrunners treat their characters- and fans who decide (which is their freaking right) to call them out of their BS- is absolutely disgusting.
frankly this show needs more people calling the writers/producers out on their shit because what the fuck. i don’t understand anything any more.
I won’t mince words: I’m very unhappy with tonight’s episode of Game of Thrones, “The Dance of Dragons.” It’s not that it was a bad episode. Quite the contrary. It was thrilling and tragic and intense.
It was also one of the most disturbing, baffling and unnecessary departures from the books we’ve seen yet—and wholly inconsistent with one of the most powerful moments of the season.
All I can say, to HBO and to the showrunners, is good grief what a monstrosity of a writing decision. What a horrible, no-good, very bad, infuriating way to ruin Stannis as a character and to twist the events of these stories beyond recognition in such a grotesque manner. It’s one thing to get rid of Jeyne Poole and place Sansa in her plight instead—at least it furthers the story of Sansa and saves a bit character from a horrible fate.
But killing off Shireen this way absolutely decimates Stannis as a character (the show already ruined Barristan Selmy, and now it’s ruined Stannis, too.) It renders his passionate, moving speech to his daughter meaningless. It makes him not so much a hard-to-like good guy struggling against the villains, but a villain himself and one of the worst we’ve seen. Even the ever-deplorable Cersei would never stoop so low. Even Roose Bolton treats his horrible, sadistic son better than this.
It’s also a bait-and-switch. We finally see Stannis’s softer side, we finally warm a bit to his character, and then he kills his daughter. It’s terrible storytelling. Surprisingly bad.
Before the entire internet floods me with comments about how the show’s writers admitted that Shireen’s death was GRRM’s idea in the first place—yeah, I know that they’ve said this. It doesn’t mean that it will play out the same in the books. Nor do the books include scenes with Stannis telling his daughter how he saved her life, admitting his deep love for her. In retrospect, that’s nothing short of a dirty trick at this point. A very shoddy way to treat viewers. Hopefully, if this does happen in the books, it happens in a very different way. Otherwise, Martin (along with HBO) will bear responsibility for the destruction of one of his best characters.
Erik Kain, Forbes (via stannisbaratheon)
Game of Thrones 5×09 recap: Okay, Now I’m Done
I know that the show’s mantra for about three seasons now has been, “If
you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Which, alright, but now that’s turned into “If you think this has a
happy ending…we’ll introduce some more sexual violence and child
murder into proceedings to thoroughly disavow you of that notion.”
That’s no way to run a show, although it’s certainly a way to ruin one.
My last recap.
Game of Thrones spoilers
I have no idea what I think of Sansa being set to marry Ramsey, and I think my opinion will only change based on how many people she kills before getting the hell out of there.