How the writers are still employable, let alone not in massive debt, astounds me. They single-handedly got one of the most successful shows, a show that people wouldn’t shut up about and were hanging for each episode every week, and turned it into something to feel a bit embarrassed to admit liking. All the potential DVD/bluray sales - gone. All the merchandising - gone. The potential for spin-off shows - gone. HBO and their partners just watched millions in revenue disappear in one catastrophic season,and somehow D&D got away with it.
I did laugh when Disney told them their services weren’t needed after all though.
All the potential DVD/bluray sales - gone. All the merchandising - gone. The potential for spin-off shows - gone
I’m sure they’re still making money hand over first from DVD sales & streaming. Not to mention they actually did launch a spin off show
I have seasons 1-7 if anyone wants them.
Not really, thanks though.
turned it into something to feel a bit embarrassed to admit liking
Pretty sure that’s not a thing
Makes me think of the story Steven King told about getting a letter from a fan, sometime around book 5, explaining that she was over 90 and begging him to tell her how it ended, because she didn’t know if she’d live long enough for him to finish the series. He had to decline, explaining that he simply didn’t know yet, and wouldn’t know until he wrote the last page.
It’s oddly heartbreaking, as she probably didn’t; it took him 22 years to complete the series, all told, and 6 or 7 years from her letter to the culmination of the story.
Anyway, your thought reminded me of that.
OP is referencing the Dark Tower series for those who didn’t know.
Which, while they are quite good, they feel like the least “Stephen King” of his novels, even the bachman books.
I read the first book and had absolutely no fucking clue what was happening. Do they get better? I feel like I needed to be doing cocaine at the time.
It can’t hurt. The author certainly was.
The first one is mostly vibes. There’s not a ton of good story meat in it, and it’s pretty short. Book 2 really gets going though, and book 3 is just wild. Once you get to Wolves of the Calla, though, it’s really gonna test your patience.
I enjoyed them but as I recall it stays weird. I’m into that, though. My favorites are mostly pretty weird.
I like weird! Mind sharing your favorites?
My favorites for fiction would be Neal Stephenson,Roger Zelazny, Fritz Leiber, Ursula Le Guin, Stephen R. Donaldson, Charles Bukowski, Iain Banks, Frederick Pohl, Glen Cook, Jim Butcher
Ups and downs; like I said, written over a dozen years, the styles vary, and there’s some consensus that there are a couple which are “the best,” and a couple which aren’t. However, if you didn’t like the first, it’s probably fair to say you probably wouldn’t much care for the rest.
It’s because they’re not horror, and SK is known best for his horror. I do think he’d said, at one point, that TDT was the most meaningful series to him, and the fact that it forms an umbrella reality encompassing all of his other stories - sometimes featuring characters from his other novels, is significant.
That said, I’m not a King fan; I don’t much care for horror, so his money making genre isn’t very compelling for me. But I did get super-into The Dark Tower. It’s up there among my favorite works, despite the ending.
Yeah, thanks. I meant to reference it.
It could have been better, but I was OK with it. I didn’t hate it like many people did; I just thought it could have been better.
In the wise words of Lindsay Ellis: “The ending being bad was foreshadowed by other things being bad.”
Lindsay summed up the theme of the final season so well in the thumbnail of one of her videos: “Dragon Lady Bad”.
And then there was Jimmy Carter.
My guy was so disappointed he died. Rip
In another way, GoT may have given them the gift of looking forward to a legit ending.
Sweet relief
I hated the ending of GoT almost as much as I hated the ending of Mass Effect 3.
I still am not over that trainwreck.
At least with Mass Effect, most of the third act was solid. Plus, there’s always the Indoctrination Theory to help cope (even if it wasn’t intended).
GoT is utterly unsalvageable.
Yeah, but I was so invested in ME. It was such a deep game with so many storylines…all ultimately pointless.
I see your point, though. Right up until the very end, I had a great time. Somehow, though, it feels worse for that abrupt lurch into stupidity.
Yeah, I hear you. Prior to 3, I genuinely expected Mass Effect to evolve into the Star Trek of my generation, complete with spin-off shows, movies, books, etc.
That ending sure took the wind out of those sails.
Within this context, netflixes policy of unceremoniously killing shows is probably keeping people alive.
Word
Did they die disappointed, or perhaps die of disappointment?
The terminally-ill people died of their illness, disappointed.
Some of the non-terminally-ill people got terminally ill, whether from or with the disappointment is yet to be determined.
“Why do you think I came all this way?”
*dies*
Yes, I was almost one of them. I went on living out of spite.
Seriously though, that’s a really sad fact of life. Just think about those who died after the “Lost” finale.
Nah, they’d just assume they’d died a year ago and were in purgatory since then.
I did not understand that reference.
Final season of Lost, viewers dubbed the weird plotline that replaced the flashbacks ‘the purgatory’ they were all in until each had died and they could move on together.
Sorry, I was going for a play on “I understood that reference” and “LOST was overly complicated and I didn’t get it.” But I appreciate the explanation, thank you!
As a non-Lost watcher, this is the normal level of confusing for Lost references.
Spoilers for Lost to follow.
Ok, so in the beginning, there was an Island that existed at the nexus of life and death, good and evil. It was a place of power and magic. There lived an unnamed woman. She was the protector of the heart of the island, which was a magical spring that granted immortality and clarvoyance, along with some additional powers that are never clearly defined.
No one knows how long she lived there, but roughly 2,000 years ago a ship of travelers wrecked near the island and the survivors came ashore, where they started a community. One of them was a woman, Claudia, who was pregnant. The unnamed woman brought Claudia to her cave to help Claudia give birth. Claudia gave birth to a son she named Jacob, and then a twin who was not given a name. The woman then killed Claudia and chose to raise the twins as her own, calling herself Mother.
As the boys grew, Mother tried to teach them right from wrong, teaching them that the island was all there is. Jacob would listen and try his best, while his brother was more rebellious. Mother showed the boys the heart of the island and explained to them that one day one of them would take her place as its protector. She also explained that she had made it so that the brothers could not harm each other.
Some time later, a vision of Claudia appears to Jacob’s brother and says that Mother killed her. When confronted, Mother acknowledges that she did, and justifies it saying that Claudia and all of her people from the shipwreck were bad people. Jacob accepts this, while the brother runs off and decides to live with the people in their community. Jacob stays with Mother, but visits his brother with Claudia’s people.
Decades later, the people in the community have discovered the healing magnetism of the island, and have learned to dig caves to learn about and access more power. The brother, now known as the Man in Black, begins building a giant wheel underground with the intent of using it to get off the island. The wheel could alter time and space, moving individuals and even the entire island from place to place and time to time. Mother discovered the MiB’s plan, and knocked him unconscious. She sealed off the chamber where the wheel was, and killed all of Claudia’s people.
Mother then took Jacob to the heart of the island and told him to take her place. He drank from the well, and she showed him a cave of light. She warned Jacob never to enter the cave of light. She said that he would protect the island for as long as he could, but also he should search for his own replacement.
The Man in Black arrives and stabs Mother in the back, for which she thanks him. Jacob is enraged and fights with the Man in Black, eventually throwing him into the cave of light. This kills the Man in Black, and Jacob buries him and Mother in a grave together. However, the Man in Black is reborn as a smoke monster who can change shape and create whispers.
Jacob and the Smoke Monster spend over 1,000 years locked in a stalemate, with neither able to harm the other. They argue about humanity, and whether all people are corruptible or if they can tell right from wrong on their own. Jacob could magically leave the island, but the Smoke Monster was trapped on the Island and desperately wanted to leave. Jacob brought people to the island, by shipwrecks or magnetism or magic, but chose not to intervene while they killed each other or were killed by the Smoke Monster.
In the 1800’s, another ship wrecks and a man named Richard Alpert comes ashore. The MiB tries to get Richard to kill Jacob with a special knife, but instead Jacob speaks with Richard and offers Richard long life to act as a leader and intermediary between Jacob and the island inhabitants. Richard led the island residents for over 100 years, remaining young and protecting his people from the Smoke Monster.
Some time in the 1960s, away from the Island, mathematicians and financiers start the DHARMA Initiative. They are studying a mathematical equation (the Valenzetti Equation) that supposedly predicts the end of the world, and hope to prevent the end by adjusting critical constants in the fabric of reality. They research places of magnetism and power, and build research stations. They also made chocolate bars that you could have bought for real during the run of the show.
One of the stations they built in the 1960s was the Lamppost, which used a place of power to locate other places of power. One of those places was the Island, which actually moved around from place to place in the south Pacific ocean. DHARMA launched an expedition to the Island with a well-funded team of scientists, engineers, and support, and started conducting research in the early 1970s. Their aim was to harness the powers of the island to alter one or more of Valenzetti’s constants. DHARMA built many research stations on the island, giving them each names like The Swan and The Pearl and The Arrow.
DHARMA created a tentative truce with Richard and the inhabitants of the island they called the Hostiles. DHARMA brought animals, including polar bears, to their Hydra station for experiments. There was also a DHARMA Janitor named Bob who brought his son, Benjamin Linus, to the island. Bob was an abusive father, and Ben ran away to the woods where he met Richard. Ben asked to join the hostiles, but Richard said he would have to be patient.
The Swan was built, under the direction of a DHARMA engineer named Radzinsky, to harness an underground pocket of magnetic magic energy, but in 1977 there was an Incident during drilling. To avert a catastrophic explosion, they dropped a hydrogen bomb into the pocket and detonated it, which released a time-warping amount of magnetic energy.
DHARMA then built the rest of the Swan station underground not to harness the enegy, but to periodically release it in small quantities. Radzinsky was assigned to be sealed into the Swan station and press a button every 108 minutes to release the energy. For security, he was isolated with food and supplies periodically air-dropped to him. To access the button, he had to enter 6 numbers into a computer terminal, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 (the Valenzetti constants).
The Pearl station was built to monitor and document the activities of the person operating the Swan. Pearl observers were told that the Swan station was a psychological experiment where the subject believes they must press the button to avoid ending the world. Pearl observers took shifts watching and logging everything Radzinsky did until 1991 when he was joined by another DHARMA member, Kelvin.
Then a bunch of stuff happened, and Nikki and Paulo were bitten by a spider and died.
What the fuck.
I thankfully got lost on the plot sometime between S3 and S4, decided there was no possible chance for a satisfying ending and quit.
I thought that might be the case, but clarity wins out with me.
Good policy.
Lost finale was great though.
Edited to add, wild to get downvoted for a harmless opinion. Did my love of a show hurt you? Yeesh.
In the sense that it was a mercy killing, yes
No matter what you think about the Lost ending (I liked it), it couldn’t compare to the trainwreck that was Game of Thrones’ final seasons
I agree, mentioning Lost and GoT final season in the same breath is such an insult.
No worries then, the only way to live past your natural expiration date is believing in Medicine and getting qualified help. The vast majority of terminal patients couldn’t live on longer even if they were emotionally invested in a TV Show.
My cousin and How I met your mother.
I showed my wife an alt ending I had found that ends the story without the bad stuff and the dumb stuff
Poor guy. It’s been 8 years since I last watched that show and I’m still pissed.
Yup. That’s the thing that upset them.
Doors of stone has entered the chat
i never quite got what was so bad about the ending. i heard for years how shit it ended and i waited for the show to become shit and i waited so long that the final episode finished and i was still waiting for the shit
How could you miss it? At some point way before the end, the characters behave strangely, the dialog is crap and the actions are ridiculous. Then the end comes and you realize that nothing made any sense.
i muat have accidentally skipped those episodes then, because i really dont remember crap dialogue or ridiculous actions
How about Bran becoming king? Or winterfell seceding from the seven kingdoms without backlash from the other six?
whats wrong with those? the series ends before we see any backlash to any decision made and how is the 3 eyed raven becoming king such a bad thing?
It was so bad that the writers thought they could coast on the hit show and easily find work afterwards.
Producers noticed, and the writers couldn’t find work. It’s well known that they wrote complete garbage, even they hinted at not caring by the end.
Honestly, /r/freefolk really have a nice list.
The quality of writing tanked.
Multiple story threads from all the way back to season one went literally no where (like the patterns), Arya and the Faceless Ones. So many characters who just blinked out of existence because D&D forgot they existed and they didn’t directly server the plot (like literally everyone following Bran around for so many seasons).
Characters started not acting like themselves. Daenerys went from the savior of the people to mad queen… a roll that better fir Cersei, in a blink of an eye because of “bells”. Cersei nukes a chunk of the cities. Daenerys earned the title ‘Queen of Meereen’ from her campaign in Slaver’s Bay. Bran was shown to be the villain and it’s literally never addressed. He has wild powers and doesn’t use it. Seems to go from an innocent child on a wild adventure to positioning himself as king… instead of anyone else that would have made sense. “Who has a better story”… FFS, EVERYONE. And D & D seemed to forget the “Mad King” was saying “Burn them all” because Bran, yet again, fucked with someones head.
D & D forgot where Westeros was… Also forgot about the Iron Fleet
Cersei dies by brick to the head… (just more pointing out the lame writing). Contrast that with like, Eddard’s execution.
Just go to /r/Freefolk… Season 7 and 8 were shit. Because D & D wanted to abandon GoT to go do Star Wars. HBO had more money for them, told them they could do more seasons. Naw, last 2 they phoned it in with 2 “seasons” there were the length of 1 and the quality of the aftermath of a night out of drunk taco bell binge eating…
daenarys was going to be the mad queen from episode 1, so that specific complaint has no ground because you can see the foreshadowing all over the series. honestly, think of all the times daenarys had to be talked out of mass slaughtering
I disagree. Now I’ve never read the books, I only know the TV show. She took out slavers, oppressors, just generally people that would be the villain archetype and there was never some big reveal that actually anyone she was taking down wasn’t just that. By that same logic, my great grandfather is a bad guy because he helped take down Nazi’s in WWII, a group most would agree, were the bad guys.
She flipped at a sound of a bell against unarmed, innocent citizens who didn’t even know who she was.
But by all means, I’m down to watch Episode 1 again, what scene exactly foreshadows her going genocidal?
dude she married into khal drogo and had things gone well her and the dothraki would be raping and pillaging all of westeros
she also has to be talked out of slaughtering all her enemies, something that ramsay bolton actually does (doesnt work out well for him)
id have to watch episode 1 again to see what the foreshadowing was, or if i was wrong and it happens in a different episode
also your grandfather analogy is nowhere near the same as for daenarys, your grandfather was not conquering the countries occupied by nazis and personally burning everyone down, before eventually moving on to the soviet union because stalin executed his best friend. that did not happen. rewatch the series in the eyes of dany was always the mad queen, and youll find you were justifying her most implusove and abhorrant behaviors for all of the show
The marriage to Drogo was an arranged marriage, to help Viserys get the crown.
There’s a difference between who traditionally were her enemies and Ramsay’s enemies… And it’s medieval times. Again, she really only had it out for oppressors. She went through many areas w/o slaughtering everyone.
The whole mad queen, which might be foreshadowed in the books, was not in the show. The Mad King, the thing everyone pointed too, was caused by Bran. The “Mad King” was just fine. Just like Hodor was just fine until Bran came along. But because he never is like “oh hey guys, yeah, turns out the mad king saying “burn them all” was actually my fault” so the myth/legend around it always going to happen due to “reason”, at least in the show, falls apart. From my understanding, the books do foreshadow more of Daenerys’s madness and its possible edits from D&D end up casting her in a very different light. Which just echo’s how shit D&D were/are.
mad queen was foreshadowed in the show, i just told you where and when and how to see it
Yeah, that’s actually one point where I think the books were a bit weak. To me, she already was the mad Queen. How many people were slaughtered at her command in the books? If John Snow had slaughtered whole cities because they wouldn’t bend the knee, we could be expected to say some mean things about him.
