It's not rude, because if you actually genuinely believe it, it means you're unable to see the titanic difference between early show and late show, and honestly that's about as insulting as just thinking "okay, he's playing dumb".
Yes, people going at the places they need to be with seriously distorted distances has always been a staple of the show (it was even mocked in this very forum as early as season 2 or 3), but that's just taken a new life and a new scale since S6, and if it doesn't jump in your face, I don't know what to tell you.
You are reading what you want to read in my posts rather than what's actually there,
and you're being very rude in the process.
I don't know why you're trying to create beef with me, but it seems transparently clear that you're doing it.
Just like comparing an actual, in-plot use of magic, detailed and planned (if not really elegant), with a deus ex machina guy whose fleet just appears out of nowhere and fire guided missiles at a dragon that didn't see them coming from his high vantage point, gives the same vibe of either bad faith or just mind-blowing blindness.
His fleet didn't show up out of nowhere. Euron's Iron Fleet has been in the show for a solid two seasons and
just last season it wrecked Daenerys' own fleet without being defeated in its turn. I didn't check the leaked stuff, but as soon as we saw a shot of Daenerys' convoy from White Harbor in Episode 4 I
immediately asked where Euron was. (A former member of this message board was at the same watch party and could corroborate; he read the spoilers himself and asked me if I'd done the same when I made that comment.) And the existence and effectiveness of the scorpion-windlass-ballista things is hardly news, either; after what happened at the Blackwater it makes sense that Qyburn would order the manufacture of more and maybe improve the design a bit based on experience.
Daenerys is not a good war leader. She is bad at war in a strategic sense, because she fails to understand that Cersei's regime is painfully weak and that waiting it out would probably force it to collapse. (The showrunners may not understand that, either, although Tyrion makes some of the good and unanswerable arguments for that position. The plan for the fleet to sail separately when the Lannisters still possess a larger and more powerful armada is not very bright, though, and he should take the blame for that.) She's also bad at war in that she doesn't understand battle; she is extremely cavalier with both the forces under her command and with her dragons. She's absurdly cavalier with her dragons in combat or potential combat situations. She understands the awe and fear that they inspire while failing to understand their fragility or their real combat value. It makes her pretty stupid, and it's certainly frustrating that she hasn't learned from her past experiences. But it's not exactly the most unbelievable thing in the world that she'd be careless with her dragons and get ambushed.
Now, in the show, the ambush was staged as the sort of extra-drama silliness that, well, shows and films love. I, too, was laughing at how a
fleet in
clear weather could possibly be a surprise to dragons. (Giving Euron bad weather to work with, as he had the previous season, would have made the ambush scene
much better.) But there's a difference between saying something was silly and saying that it was not set up. The former is true; I don't think the latter is at all.
No, that's not what Dachs is saying, that's what I am saying.
How can you manage to misread that much ?
No, it
is what I said. It is
literally what I said.
None of that means that I think that the current showrunners are particularly competent or effective. Their early additions to the book story, like their mutilation of the Dorne plot, were awful. They have been willing to ignore characterization more readily than in the past; their arcs for some characters (particularly Jaime) have been terrible lately. And while Martin was bad about things taking time and distance being a thing, the past several seasons have been worse. Part of that is trying to pull everything back together quickly, which I acknowledge and understand as a valid concern and an issue often borne of Martin's own errors, but it still strains belief and makes the show harder to enjoy.
I think the difference between Now and Back Then is that the showrunners have exaggerated many of Martin's worst tendencies as an author. Where you see a steep decline in quality I see one that is decidedly less steep, and I'm more willing to place blame on things from the first part of the series than you are.
Well, Martin could have had him choke on a fishbone or something, but magic demon baby is way cooler.
I'm sure you of all people can think of several instances in history where a general or ruler dies of some stupid, unexpected or mundane reason, causing a similar disintegration.
Well, sure, with one caveat.
Often, the trope of the great conqueror dying "just in time" is employed to heighten drama or to rebuke his failed successors for supposedly being incompetent, rather than being an accurate representation of what might have happened next. Alexander, for example, conquered an empire with such extensive limits that he could barely control it, and his so-called "last plans" or "will" were mostly silliness. It's hard to see what else he could have plausibly conquered afterward. Timur died on the way to invade China, but he was old and decrepit anyway. Gustav Adolf's control over the conquered parts of the Empire was slipping at his death and his ability to keep what he had, let alone go further, was in serious question. You get the idea.
Assassination plots, for their part, usually only work if the leader is already in the process of failing, making his subordinates dissatisfied with his performance, as for example Perdikkas' assassination during the invasion of Egypt. Motivated bodyguards usually deal with assassins pretty well, and Renly was successful and had a highly motivated bodyguard in his corner.
But yes. Neither of the above considerations is a "rule" and these things do happen; my favorite example is the murder of Philippos II. War and politics make for rough business; accidents happen and people get mad. That's not the point. The point is that what happens to Renly literally follows Akka's complaint about seasons 7 and 8
word for word:
Euron is basically a Ramsay deus ex machina to level the field by magically killing whatever is needed to prevent the logical crushing of Lannister forces when it should happen
The demon assassin baby "magically killed whatever was needed to prevent the logical crushing of Lannister forces when it should [have] happen[ed]". In fact, unlike Euron's fleet, the demon baby was
actual magic! It's even
more literal than the original quotation!
I'm not saying that it was
impossible that such a thing might have happened to Renly Baratheon. I'm saying that it was done solely to keep the Lannisters alive and heighten the drama, exactly as the introduction of Euron and his fleet has done now. This is why it's good to read the entire context of a discussion, which admittedly is not always one of
my strong suits either.
(And, of course, the mechanism of a demon assassin baby was very silly. At least Euron has an actual fleet. I mean, the fact that he
has a fleet is faintly silly, but so is most of the worldbuilding around the Iron Islanders in both the books and the show, so his ability to generate a second fleet from the islands isn't really that bad. The Iron Islands don't really have timber! They shouldn't even have
a fleet, not two!...but let all of that go.)
This is my central, overriding message: the show has changed, and I think that in a lot of ways it
has gotten worse, but it hasn't gotten
that much worse, and the things people complain about now are often problems that existed earlier in the show. I still enjoy the show, and I have been enjoying it since I started watching it. But I enjoy it because I
don't expect it to be much more than HBO vamping, blood, and sex; the show's veneer of high politics and war has never really sustained my suspension of disbelief, not in the first season and not in the last. It has worked for some people, which is fine for them. I don't begrudge them that any more than I assume astrophysicists begrudge me the ability to enjoy
Interstellar. Whatever the reason,
Game of Thrones' storytelling hasn't really worked for me.
What I am saying here to some of the people disappointed in the most recent seasons, basically, is "join the club".
That would be deliciously ironic, while simultaneously fulfilling the prophecy... AND subverting expectations.
) days, eg with Stannis vs the Ironborn rebellion.
