Game of Thrones: endings

Sansa's ending was perfect. She deserves Winterfell. For some reason she fights for the North's independence more than anyone, and she makes sense to rule it. I hope she has children so there's "always a Stark at Winterfell". Sansa, for all her childhood fantasies of King's Landing, for all her time spent there, comes to adore the North and I'm glad it's hers. Jon is the only other option, but I guess he selects his fate by slaying the queen.

Jon's fate is sad; he's the last Targaryen, raised by Ned Stark, erstwhile King of the North, heir to Aerys, savior of the Seven Kingdoms -- basically all high and mighty things -- yet he's resigned to watcher on the wall, and watching for what? Lost wanderers? The White Walkers are extinct (supposedly), the wildlings are friends, the whole North and Real North are united, what's the Wall for? What's the Watch for? Will they start climbing it for sport? Will they roam farther than ever before, in the gentleness of a Walker-less summer? Jon is the noblest individual in Westeros, by blood and by deed, so it's sad to seem him resigned. But his slight smile at the end, as he forges forth with Ghost and Tormund by his side, is encouraging. The Wall isn't punishment or prison for him, it's an old home, it's where he once swore to live out his days, it's perhaps anticlimactic but not unjust.

Arya's adventure is fun. I regret that she's leaving her family, leaving Gendry, leaving her home, all that she so valiantly protected, but I must admire the effort and find some joy in it. Part of me would love to see her and Gendry ruling Storm's End. As far as political positions, she could do worse than that. But Gendry would get the glory and the challenge; she'd just be his buddy. Also she's too great for Storm's End; she'd be a better knight of the North, Hand of Sansa, or Lord Commander of Bran's Guard. I'd like her serving her family and her home, not her own fancies. But maybe there's some fruit to be found in the West. And Westeros is too peaceful for her at the moment. She's bred for battle, whether the apparent or the incognito kind, and we're beginning a Pax Westerosi. How long it will last, none can say, but with the Lannisters, Targaryens, and White Walkers smushed, things are looking up.

Sam is a sensible Grandmaester. Tyrion is a sensible Hand; who else? Other than the Starks, who belong in the North, Davos is the only other person who has really advised royalty; he's a solid choice, but Tyrion is clearly craftier. Davos is the most grounded guy of all time, but Bran is already pretty grounded, and Tyrion is smarter.

I'm going to list my tiers of characters, like I did after I first watched the series. I'm not going to look back at those tiers, I'm just going to state my current ones.

1. Ned. I know I put Ned and Jon at the same level last time. But Ned is my perfect hero, while Jon goes through some rough patches. Ned actually has the advantage of only living through the infancy of the series. He's Brett Favre to Jon's Aaron Rodgers; I actually saw more of Rodgers, and from a mature lens, but Favre was the icon of my youth, and he was snipped before I could hedge my opinion of him. Favre lives on as my OG icon, like Ned. Maybe further seasons of Ned would have spoiled his perfection.
2. Jon: an almost perfect man. He makes some mistakes, he has to grow out of some immaturity early on, his ending is anticlimactic, he is sometimes boringly perfect, and he tarries too long at the Watch to be so constantly interesting as Ned. But he is a model man who inspires my love.
3. Arya: savvy, strong, yet heartfelt
4. Sansa
5. Jaime, Robert, Hound
6. Davos, Varys. Davos is a bastion of grounded, straightforward reason. He's the most common-sense no-nonsense guy of them all. He's not very awe-inspiring, but he's a solid guy to have around in any scenario. Varys is brilliant and savvy, a little treacherous, but a genuine servant of the realm, and a fascinating conversationalist.
7. Tormund, Brienne, Stannis. It may be strange to place stone-cold child-burning Stannis at a level with two undeniable heroes of the long night who are also consistent light bringers (pun intended). But here's the thing, I really like Stannis, if you remove the child-burning. He's tough and eloquent; I think his actor does a great job; the way he speaks is emblematic of tough strength. He's a Baratheon, who are Stark allies and stout warriors. Tormund and Brienne, for their valor and humor, just aren't my taste.
8. Theon
9. for the villains, see here

Need to place somewhere: Tyrion, Dany, Gendry, Grey Worm, Jorah, Sam, the direwolves, the dragons, Bronn, Cat, Robb

Lessons from Game of Thrones

Based on the show, the most obvious way to state Robb's fatal fault is that he tried to be honorable while allowing an aberration. Had he not lied to the Freys, they presumably wouldn't have massacred his house. Alternatively, had he leaned into his lie, he might have escaped it. Robb leans full tilt into the honorable lifestyle of his father, yet excuses his own clear aberration, promising himself to the Freys and marrying another. One can surmise he was too emotionally weak -- or young -- to materialize the honor his father lived by, yet he tried to sustain the principle. He breaks his own code and apologizes, which is the right way to restore the code, but it's dangerous to break in the first place. He faces the punishment of his own oath breaking. He needed to either keep his father's code the whole time, or lean into wartime survivalism.

Perhaps he allowed himself an aberration because he could see just such an exception on his father's record. Jon is a living symbol of honor's exceptions. The irony is he's not -- Ned never broke his honor (save perhaps at the end) -- but Robb doesn't know that. How often do we see our parents break their own codes, and thereby allow ourselves the occasional slip?

So there's the question of Ned's honor in the end. He dies the very moment he breaks his honor; yet Varys says he's a dead man anyway, and his lie appears to be his best shot at saving his children. Joffrey lusted for Stark blood regardless, so it's hard to say whether Ned broke his code for nothing, or whether it was his best shot. Or whether it actually hurt his children's chances! Had Ned refused to even appear before the mob, who knows how things would have transpired. Joffrey may not have pounced on such an auspicious opportunity to flex his power. Cersei, Sansa, and the like may have connived another fate for Ned, behind closed doors. Perhaps the lesson is that Ned's breaking of his own code is what precipitates his death, even if his death seemed materially imminent. Symbolically, it was the breaking. Perhaps the lesson, for he and Robb, is to hold one's code, as a single exception is the death of the code and the death of the holder.

Game of Thrones: understanding S8 events and character motivations

Would Jon really have killed Dany? First, we have to define a frame of reference for Jon. Since I haven't entirely read the books, and since there's a clear delineation in the series where Martin's direct inspiration drops off and the writing style changes, I'll define the real Jon as Jon in the first 6 or 7 seasons of the series: "6-7 Jon".

Jon is motivated by family, love, and transcending his bastard identity, but perhaps above all, he's motivated by the honor that drove his father. He's not a Varys, who always purely "served the realm". Therefore when Tyrion asks him to do "a terrible thing, but the right thing", Tyrion is speaking in the best interest of the realm, and therein lies the rub: is the right thing the best thing for the realm, or the honorable thing for the individual? And therein lies the rub: what's the meaning of this code of honor, if it doesn't serve the greater world? Why would Ned refuse Joffrey's claim, if seemingly everyone suffers in his refusal? Is that honorable, or selfish, or arbitrarily religious? Why would Jon keep his queen when seemingly everyone suffers for it, nor does she have the best claim? And therein lies the rub: does he break his oath for the good of the realm, or because her claim was proven false; and why do he and Ned care so much about traditional lines of succession; and if they do care so much, why does Jon support the Targaryen succession over others before or after them; and why does Jon continue to speak, to the very end, like Dany is his queen, when he plans to topple her and when lying is a cardinal sin in his mind? I think the most interesting question is the meaning of this "honor". I suppose it means keeping oaths, but why is that the summum bonum? I think it's a good code, in that it's simple and it generally serves everyone. If you're going to live by a code, you could do worse than this. And I get the idea of living by a code: you don't have to second-guess every decision, and your conflicting drives don't corrupt your actions. But true wisdom is not codified like that; it's fluid from moment to moment; it's spontaneous; you have to study each new moment with supple reasoning. The wisest people don't live by such codes; this is what separates Tyrion from Ned/Jon, and even Littlefinger from them. Tyrion is constantly considering the best outcome for the party he's serving; it's exhausting but it gets better outcomes than following a simple code, if you're smart enough and rational enough to keep it up. Littlefinger takes it even further, explicitly stating that he has one goal in mind (the Iron Throne with Sansa beside him), and he plays out every possible action in his head, assessing whether it satisfies that goal; but Tyrion is a better example because his goals are not so simple, not so self-serving. Tyrion is probably the best example of wisdom among the main characters (not pulling from Maester Aemon or anything).

So I'm saying Ned and Jon are not the best examples of wisdom. Their codes are simple and intuitive, which gain them respect and, to a degree, success and a sense of maintaining world order. But their success is characteristically neutered, as is their service to the world, and they surely don't find happiness through this code. Happiness and service cannot be cleanly codified; the world, and the soul, demand supple decision-making. If someone isn't brainy enough for that, a code such as honor isn't the worst they can do; it probably lands them in a better spot than the improvisation of Tyrion and Littlefinger would. Littlefinger himself says the Starks are slow, Ned calls himself primarily a soldier, and Jon says he doesn't like riddles. Ned and Jon are relatively straightforward, so a straightforward code serves them. I do think they're wise, but too pious to be wisest.

Anyway, 6-7 Jon wouldn't have killed Dany because his job isn't to serve the realm at all cost (unlike Varys), and killing his sworn queen is more of a breach of honor than it is an upholding of his oath to be "the shield that guards the realms of men". Alas, classic case of conflicting oaths. But I think the clearer path is to not murder your sworn queen, as "guarding the realms of men" is ambiguous in the first place.

Then again, Jon interpreted his oaths loosely when he lay with Ygritte and when he abandoned the Watch after his death. He's half Targaryen after all. But breaking his oath to Dany was too egregious, I think, for 6-7 Jon, so either Jon authentically evolves in S8 or, more likely, the writing fails to deliver authentic actions or at least to properly justify his actions. Most citizens of Westeros would egregiously break an oath for their own good or for the realm's good; but Jon isn't most citizens.

Would Dany really have decimated King's Landing? It's strange how instantaneous that decision was. As the bells ring, you can watch her expression turn to slaughter. Why, when the surrendering bells ring, do her eyes begin to smolder? That's identically the moment you relent, especially at the explicit advice of your counsels. But tell me too, why does she raze the whole city? I can see her attacking the Red Keep, that is, cutting the lion's head, but why burn the whole thing? How will that secure power for you and peace for the people in future generations? You're destroying so much infrastructure you'll have to rebuild, and decimating an innocent population who never swore for Cersei. You're creating fatal enemies for yourself (Jon, and probably others if Jon cowed away from the deed). You're mimicking your loathed father by setting fire to King's Landing. You're spinning the wheel you intend to break; how will that not make it harder to break? And why does all of that aggression fall on that one moment, the moment your enemies surrender? The power of sacking the capital just kindled her desire for more power? It feels out-of-character. Now, I saw her fury at Missandei's execution; her despair when her second dragon went down; her sense of betrayal at Jon's revelation, both the betrayal of her advisors for spreading the secret and the strange betrayal of the fates for lifting someone into the seat she was always made to occupy. She is angry, and more importantly, confused -- confused at her own destiny, in light of Jon's new identity, and she's eager to coax that destiny into existence, the one she's believed for years.

When I first saw S8, I thought these two actions I'm discussing -- Jon's regicide and Dany's massacre -- were uncharacteristic and unjustified. I still think so, but I don't think the show does too bad a job at supporting them. Jon's action is supported through his trend of interpreting his vows looser than Ned did his, and through Jon's revelation as a Targaryen, which endows him with a higher destiny. Even if he doesn't believe Targaryens are actually nobler, he knows they are more intertwined with nobility and with the fate of things than Starks are. He must have an elevated sense of worth and fate, knowing he's a Targaryen-Stark heir rather than a Stark bastard. So it isn't insane to think he would suddenly start reaching for the future prosperity of the realm as opposed to keeping to his simple humble code. As for Dany, her destiny is suddenly threatened in the person of Jon, and she sees how much they love him, so she resigns herself to the tactic of fear. Not only is she furious, she's desperate and confused, desperate to manifest the fate she always believed in. So in that way, she's a different person in S8 than prior seasons. Still, I'm skeptical either of these critical actions would have been taken by the characters as they were built up in the first 6/7 seasons. Jon is too honorable, and Dany is too kind. Her greed and desperation shouldn't have withered her heart so suddenly, and only a withered heart burns the capital to the ground with all the innocents in it.

Game of Thrones micro-acting

If Dany is supposed to be our favorite character, then Emilia Clarke ruins her. Even, or especially, when she's supposed to feel like family, she feels uncannily distant. She is painfully unromantic during the "warm up your queen" moment, and her sit-down with Sansa feels like a corporate "I'm better than you because I'm confronting conflict in the workplace with a level head." When she jokes that she only trusts two men in the world, Jon and "someone taller", her smile is sickening. And these are supposed to be the heartwarming moments -- I can't even list the multitude of unsavory pride moments.

I'm obsessed with Northern speech. I'm biased by loving the North in general, but the speech itself gets me too. Robb's full-mouthed "motha" before he dies; when Sansa says "anything" like "ennathen"; Ned scratchily saying "your grace" like "yu gtace"; Jon chopping off letters in his pronunciation like they were so many undead heads. I really haven't studied this linguistically, but I feel like Northern speech is characterized by missing letters and fuller-mouthed vowels. I love it -- louhve, not laeve.

Game of Thrones

Here's where I'm at.

S1 is terrific, albeit a little skewed toward the intriguing and trashy over the epic, or similarly, the political over the fantastical. But I don't think this means GOT/ASOIAF is founded on the political and the intriguing over the epic and the magical. The first scene in both the books and the series involves the Wall and the White Walkers; it thus grounds the franchise instantly in the epic and the magical, never mind the dominating threads of familial conflict throughout S1. "Winter is coming" was always an overarching arc; it defines our favorite house, and it largely defines the franchise from that first scene to the final season.

You might therefore wonder why the Long Night was one brief episode, and not even one of the last few episodes of the series. It's similar to wondering why the Scouring of the Shire ends LotR instead of Mount Doom. You get why the Grey Havens are the last chapter, but shouldn't it be Mount Doom, then going home, then Grey Havens, with no conflict in there, all resolution and tying things up? Similarly, you'd think the Long Night should be the final conflict of GoT, with just an episode or two after it to wrap things up peaceably. As it is, the series makes a statement that the game of thrones was the most definitive conflict all along, which feels silly, considering the existential threat of winter. I certainly believe Cersei and Co needed to be dealt with, but it's anticlimax after the existential threat is quelled. Well, you could argue this is just the way things played out: Dany helped in the Long Night, and then Dany died; she certainly didn't die before helping with the Long Night! Nor would the final vie for the throne be as interesting without her involved. So it makes sense that important political things happen after the Long Night. But the way it plays out isn't ideal, so I'm sure it could have been planned better. Maybe they just rushed it. Maybe there has to be political strife after the Long Night, but it deserves a handful of episodes, to take a breath after the existential threat is conquered, and then figure out where to go from there. Packing in the Long Night and the final vie in a few episodes feels anticlimactic.

Do I think the Long Night passed too easily? Probably. The deus ex machina in GoT is almost insufferable. Also, if the White Walkers are so easily killed with a single knick of Valyrian steel or dragon glass, and if such a knick has the potential to end the entire crusade, why are they fighting in the fray? If the Night King's death can end the entire crusade, and his death is so easy a single human can achieve it with one thrust, why is he so poorly guarded in the end? Also, how do so few of the massive ensemble of noteworthy characters die in the Long Night? If I remember right, it's basically Beric, Jorah, Theon... is that it? Three secondary characters sacrificed just to stop us from complaining that no one died in this enormously improbable struggle? Realistically, more would die, and the Night King wouldn't let himself get killed so easily. Arya wouldn't zoom past the guards. She'd try and fail and die.

I hope Martin rewrites the ending. I hope the show strayed from his guidance, or painfully condensed it. But I hope Martin has an ending in mind, right now. I hope he's just struggling to prose it together. I hope his writer's block is just for the prose and some secondary storylines; I hope he feels confident in his heart how the main storylines need to wrap up. And I hope he wrote it down, so when he dies, we can all see it, even if it's just a skeleton of a story. I'm not opposed to a happy ending, which is mostly what S8 was; I can't pull for a series ending that's as brutal as the S1 ending, or as the ending of storylines like Robb's, Cat's, most of the direwolves', etc. But S8 was not just a mostly-happy ending, it was a too-convenient ending, and it didn't feel justified. Perhaps it was just rushed. Lots of things in fantasy feel too convenient until you carefully study them. Maybe S8 just didn't give its story the right amount of study, the right ramp-up and cool-down. Maybe it needed 10 episodes, not 6.

Some of the magic feels random. I don't need all magic to be scientifically explained, but I like for it to feel consistent, and for there to be at least some evidence to chew on. Maybe there's more of that in the books. In the series, some of the magic comes out of nowhere, and feels too convenient or arbitrary. I guess if it were up to me, the magical elements would be fairly subtle, but the series would still find its epic identity. For example, battles that are perhaps unrealistic in scale, but not magical. The Wall is fantastical in scale, but it doesn't have to be magical. Even dragons are fantastical but not super magical. I like epic elements that may be fantastical but are not arbitrarily magical. The Battle of the Bastards is another example of something epic that's not magical, not even very fantastical, other than the annoying deus ex machina of the riders of the Vale. Even the undead are not unsettlingly magical to me. But the Lord of Light randomly resuscitating certain people feels too arbitrarily magical.

Game of Thrones

Dictated a few weeks ago

A couple of comments about aria she's ideal in season one: savvy and suite this is what you or Ned Stark wants your daughter to be like she's brave cunning and kind. She's a warrior thinking ahead to what she turns into. I love her competence and adventure, but I don't love her actual adventure nor the pompous air she acquires I don't love her adventure meaning I don't enjoy watching her in bravos nor her hopeless wandering in West us beforehand the bravo stuff is too far from home to detached from where my and her hearts, lie, and the Wester stuff is too hopeless and unhelpful. I want aria to be in the action doing great deeds for the things we really care about, but she has a long and tedious art once she finally gets to where she needs to be it's amazing for example what she does to the phrase and during the long night, but she's lost a bit of her old charm. She's everything she needs to be except sweet and charming. She's now too smooth almost pompous. She's perfect in season one she just has room to grow as any childhood and I still really like her later on, but it takes a while to get there and she's lost some of her Sharma along the way.

Not for Rob, the highlight of revisiting all these episodes other than simply absorbing every precious moment of Ned has been to witness Rob's maturing again. Rob is a much stronger character than I remember. I'm mostly remember him being a boy in season one and then him betraying the phrase pretty selfishly with his marriage and getting murdered. I mean, I remember him winning that battle and capturing Jaime but I've forgotten that there's actually a bit of time in which he's king of the north in season two and doing Kingley things it's great content because he's a compelling character. He's a worthy successor to Ned. I'll be young and in the end disastrous there's a worthy successor so it seems at least he's brave wise and honorable all out of young age, his fatal flaw is perhaps his romantic nature you can't imagine Ned would've betrayed the phrase out of love for another, but I found Rob a lot more compelling this time around a good example of someone in sort of my stage of life who has to make hard decisions as an adult has to decide who he wants to be in light of good role models but fright situations I was surely pulling for Rob the first time around and was devastated at the red wedding, but I think I'm pulling for him and appreciating him even more this second Time I'm seeing him is not quite so defined by the red wedding by what led up to it and it's consequences, but by being a Starr son with some great qualities and with a fatal flaw, everyone's got a fatal flaw unfortunately his manifest in one of the most devastating scenes in television so that threatens to define this character

Bugonia

Classic Lanthimos: discomfort mixed with aesthetic originality leads to an unsatisfying finish. That's been the story with Dogtooth, The Lobster, Poor Things, and now Bugonia. I haven't loved any of his movies, but I haven't disliked any. Bugonia isn't my least favorite of them; especially in the theater it was so intense; despite the weirdness people point out, it's actually intimate. There's some bold artistry, like Poor Things, but more pathos. Poor Things was too zombie; Bugonia was uncannily emotional.

I may be way off, but I suppose the title refers to the state of being like a bug, as in the bee analogy, similar to Antkind.

At first, Teddy appears caring and intelligent, and Michelle is insufferably corporate. Teddy could be a counter-culture hero, at first, like Dude Lebowski. Then he descends, past cruelty, to sheer insanity and even stupidity by the end, as we feel more and more sympathy for Michelle. Then it flips again, suddenly and definitively. But how much does it flip? Is Teddy a counter-culture hero, or the worst kind of villain? He was right all along -- genius, in fact -- but he tortured and murdered several sentient beings, terrestrial and extraterrestrial. Does his end (emancipating humanity) justify his means? Erik certainly doesn't think so, but I think sacrificing a few lives to emancipate species is an understandable if not justifiable pursuit. Teddy isn't a hero to me, but his villainy is much less clear in light of the ending. If you discovered this alien plot, which destroyed your mom and disenfranchised millions, what are the odds you'd act rationally?

There were a few moments that felt inconsistent with her humanity. She had opportunities to escape, and she squandered them. In hindsight, perhaps she was just trying to capture more information about this guy who's been trapping her species. I wonder if there were moments intended to convince the audience of her humanity that upon second watch would seem inconsistent with her alienness.

The ending struck me as dumb. Even if it was intentionally dumb, mirroring flat-earther two-dimensional thinking, it seemed like a wasted opportunity to do something really cool. Sometimes in a movie when the crazy thing you secretly want to happen happens, it's euphoric; this time it was just silly.

Lanthimos loves a good grimace. I can take some grimace, but I want it to pay off. There was a moment in Bugonia when I realized I wouldn't be happy with any ending, and that's been my experience with Lanthimos. It's upsetting and somewhat interesting and ultimately heartless. Maybe I need him to make a One Battle After Another, a hopeful heartfelt Lanthimos.

Bugonia reminds me of that other movie that feigns a heroine but that actually occurs in Plemons' head all along: I'm Thinking of Ending Things. I realize that technically Bugonia isn't all in his head, since Michelle survives Teddy's death and on the surface he was right all along. But the movie is really about the delusions of people like Teddy, and the fact that he was right all along with this absurd concoction is more of a satire than a vindication. So both movies really end up being a commentary on people like the Plemons character, and I can see why he was cast for both: his visage is frighteningly lonely. He was also a good choice for PSH's son in The Master, PSH being an icon of disturbed loneliness.

It's interesting that Lanthimos chooses to prove Teddy right in the end. Is it just for the cool twist, which flexes Lanthimos' aesthetic and storytelling boldness? Or is it because he thinks his message -- spotlighting people like Teddy -- is more potent if we pretend Teddy is right in the end? It gives Lanthimos a chance to showcase how stupid the delusion is, even when it's technically correct (not a delusion at all). When it occurred, I definitely assumed Lanthimos was just going for the tasty plot twist, but now I'm not so sure.

So how villainous or heroic was Teddy? I can't call him a hero, instinctively, due to his cruelty toward sentient beings and his general demeanor in the second half of the movie. At best he was trying to emancipate humanity, was scarred by his mother's plight, and was correct in his research, yet was understandably volatile in his execution, volatile enough to lose the badge of heroism. At worst he was avoidably delusional, the final scenes were a mock play of his fears, Michelle died on the electric chair, and he had tortured and killed several other people after the psychotic break involving his mother. So his villainy is either understandable volatility or willing delusion; both lead to the torture of sentient beings, but one may save humanity and the other is pure suffering for everyone.

I do think ends can justify means, and I do think intentions can justify actions. Examples: sacrificing one life to spare many; taking an innocuous action that anyone in good faith would take, which accidentally causes suffering. I don't think people should be legally or morally judged on the actions alone, but also on the motivations. And to a degree, that's true in the US: premeditated murder is punished harsher than involuntary manslaughter. But if I'm really being honest about a potentially controversial opinion that I haven't thought through, I don't think the US takes it far enough; I think driving a car at a BAC way over the limit should be punished the same whether or not you crash and kill someone, because at a certain level of intoxication, killing someone is simply a matter of chance, and you shouldn't be punished or spared due to chance. If it's negligent to drive at that BAC, because it could easily kill someone, you should be punished according to the negligence, not the consequences. I'm not sure what the punishment should be, between the current punishments of killing or not killing someone, I'm just saying the two shouldn't be punished so differently. But I'll admit I've been fortunate enough not to be close enough to situations like this to really explore the consequences. These are just my theories. But I'm pretty committed to judging people more by their intentions than actions. Note: negligence is part of the "intentions" calculation.