The last and final (please God!) season of everyone’s favourite excuse to talk about porn at work, airing weekly on HBO throughout early summer almost every year for the past 9, is so bad, even its own cast cannot muster anything good to say about it:
I have never really been a fan of the show. I remember watching a total of maybe one-and-a-half episodes – half of an episode from sometime after the first season aired, back in like 2013 or thereabouts, and then a full episode from (I think) Season 7 in 2017.
It is – or was – an inarguably well done series, for sure, with spectacular visuals and astonishing sets and amazing CGI work.
But… it was never actually particularly good.
The reason why is simple. The source material itself isn’t very good.
As all of you know perfectly well, A Song of Ice and Fire, around which the entire show is based, is a five-book series of high-fantasy novels written by George R. R. Martin. I am not in the least bit bothered about the fact that Gamma Rape Rape Martin’s very long-awaited sixth book in the series, The Winds of Winter, is extremely badly delayed and has been ever since the execrable A Dance with Dragons was released all the way back in 2010.
The fact is that a Gamma male like GRRM can only produce books of grinding nihilism and painfully bad writing, after a point, because he simply does not have the ability to write genuinely great original works of fiction. To use a somewhat filthy metaphor – which is actually oddly appropriate, given the nature of GRRM’s work – he shot his load early on with the first three books of the series.
I have said before that A Storm of Swords is one of the best high fantasy books ever written. That was several years ago, and the intervening years have shown me that this was an overly optimistic assessment. In reality, what made it fun to read was the frenetic action and the astonishing amount of blood and guts spilled within its pages.
But, upon reflection, it actually wasn’t particularly good.
Nobody in his right mind will compare A Storm of Swords to The Master’s Legendarium. The Lord of the Rings is far from perfect; large sections of that series are plodding and pointless, and that whole Scouring of the Shire bit at the end of The Return of the King never really made a whole lot of sense to me – but there is no doubt that Tolkien’s work was vastly superior, in every possible way, to GRRM’s work.
Old Rape Rape’s fantasy universe is endlessly nihilistic and amoral. There is nothing uplifting about any of his plots. Those who are truthful, honourable, just, decent, and righteous are always killed off; by contrast, those who get ahead are deceitful, cowardly, nasty, vile, yet highly intelligent men – or, they have ovaries and vaginas, because RESPECT WAMENZ!!!, or some such nonsense.
The only way you could possibly get more Gamma than that, is if you’re Patrick Rothfuss writing The Name of the Wind.
Given that source material to work with, and the nature of the author who wrote it, then it is not surprising that the HBO series was hugely popular among Gammas and lower Deltas, and with women. But if you actually take the time to look at it, beyond the amazing visuals and spectacular battle sequences, it is actually a profoundly stupid show.
All you have to do is try to analyse any of the big battle sequences. The lack of any serious understanding of military tactics and history is astonishing, as our beloved and dreaded Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) pointed out in a recent Darkstream discussing the debacle that was the death of the Night King:
And yes, I did blatantly steal the title of this post from His Voxness. Being one of his mindlessly obedient Vile Faceless Minions does come with some perks, after all.
The problem with Game of Thrones is that it is fundamentally a nihilistic show written by a Gamma male who inserted himself into his own story by way of the witty and highly intelligent dwarf, Tyrion Lannister, who in spite of his profound physical shortcomings is still able to bang hot women on a fairly regular basis, and always eventually comes out on top of every conflict that he finds himself involved in.
The fact that he does so using methods that are dishonourable and cowardly to moral men is either glossed over or ignored outright.
With that as the background, and given the utter degeneracy that has gripped Hollyweird over the last few decades, is it in any way surprising that the screenwriters cannot figure out how to bring this show to a satisfactory conclusion?
There is no higher moral purpose to GRRM’s writing. There are no honourable or good characters left. There are no Alpha males – because Gammas hate Alphas. The Alphas, such as Ned Stark and his son Robb, and Tywin Lannister, were killed off early on. The lower Deltas, most notably Ser Friendzone – uh, I mean, Jorah Mormont – died for no discernible purpose. The Betas all appear to follow the Crazy Queen of Dragons, Danaerys Targaryen. And the Gamma par excellence, Tyrion, is still alive against all of the odds, which are considerable, given that everyone else got offed in pretty grisly fashion.
So what are we left with, once all of the original source material – which, I repeat, wasn’t actually that good once you look at it with anything approaching a reasonably critical eye – was exhausted?
Answer: not a whole lot.
Therefore the writers decided to have Dany turn into a villain and burn the ever-loving shit out of King’s Landing, killing thousands, and conveniently setting the stage for a bunch of pointlessly stupid and utterly inexplicable major character deaths in the process.
So, what happens next?
Well, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough, given that the next episode is due to air tonight. My guess – based on Reddit leaks and other things – is that Jon kills Dany and then exiles himself, and Tyrion gets put on trial for something and ends up being the last man standing, again, as the ruler of all of Westeros.
Good heavens, what a depressingly stupid way to end the show…
Meanwhile, here is a great mashup of footage from The Bells and a classic METALLICA song, to lighten the mood a bit:
1 Comment
Just for fun, pointing out that the plot and strategy of this season has not been up to the standards of a six-year old playing with legos and toy soldiers who can figure out "don't trap your army in front of the pit" and "don't put your ballistas out front"…
youtube.com/watch?v=EA5mJRFaI8c
youtube.com/watch?v=GI7zy1PTMp0
youtube.com/watch?v=mxRgVtbZQYM
youtube.com/watch?v=uhyhQ8J7gRo