#and im not gonna say the season was shitty YES SHITTY bc of a lack of justin bc that's fucking stupid

[canarypost]

ubguys i ffu king love rick n morty

[janiedean]

Do you think book!Bran will get the same ending he does in the show? I mean, if he does, it will obviously be better written (I was like "Does Edmure know about the Three-Eyed Raven? Is Yara going 'the hell did you smoke' at the 'he couldn't walk so he learned to fly' part? Is nobody going to go 'ok but shouldn't we look for someone older and better known through Westeros, with experience in both politics and military stuff' at Tyrion?" through the whole scene), but do you think that's that?

(I had another anon that went like:

i can't believe there are still bran is evil theories. im pretty sure that bran ending up on the throne is likely bc it doesn't make sense in the show. d&d don't know anything about bran, but they do know this is george's ending

so I’m answering both XD)

the short answer is yes, but obviously it’s not gonna be written the same way as in this dumbass show for a whole lot of reasons.

now: actually, bran on the throne makes in hindsight a whole lot of sense...... if you take into account also what tropes he’s there to deconstruct. (I’m gonna cp some older meta of mine on the topic that I did ages ago but it still holds up lol.)

as in, when it comes to bran GENERALLY:

bran is the first pov chapter in these books. the first. should hint that he’s important;

bran  has 90% of the magic-related storyline. I mean, if you don’t count the dragons/r’hollor + mel and the AA prophecy, there’s less magic in asoiaf than in regular fantasy for obvious reasons, but what there is of is all in bran’s storyline. all. of. it;

as it is right now, he’s arguably a powerhouse. possibly the most powerful powerhouse in westeros. he can probably warg dragons. he can time travel. if the show didn’t fuck it up, he can change things in the past while time traveling even if he shouldn’t;

the entire storyline is headed north/behind the wall and bran is the one main character who’s behind the wall rn. and bran is at a point where he basically is in direct connection with the north at least and when I say direct I mean literally. the guy can warg into anything. maybe he can’t walk but man he’s basically a hundred luke skywalkers put into one person;

he’s also tied to all the northern mythology - the trees, the children of the forest and the likes. him, his storyline, everything. and the north is arguably where this story started and will most probably end and he is the character more symbolizing that mythology, not anyone else.

when it comes to bran thematically.... guys. bran is the deconstructed fisher king. as in: the fisher king is a character from arthurian mythology who is absolutely fundamental in the entire scheme - also arthurian mythology is one of the basis people built modern fantasy on - and which has been rehashed and reinterpreted for a shitload of times since the middle ages. c/p-ing quickly from wiki because you don’t need to go in-depth to do 2+2 on this:

In Arthurian legend the Fisher King, or the Wounded King, is the last in a long line charged with keeping the Holy Grail. Versions of his story vary widely, but he is always wounded in the legs or groin and incapable of moving on his own. In the Fisher King legends, he becomes impotent and unable to perform his task himself, and he also becomes unable to father or support a next generation to carry on after his death. His kingdom suffers as he does, his impotence affecting the fertility of the land and reducing it to a barren wasteland. All he is able to do is fish in the river near his castle, Corbenic, and wait for someone who might be able to heal him.

+Many works have two wounded “Grail Kings” who live in the same castle, a father and son (or grandfather and grandson). The more seriously wounded father stays in the castle, sustained by the Grail alone, while the more active son can meet with guests and go fishing.+The Fisher King appears first in Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval (late 12th-century), but the character’s roots may lie in Celtic mythology. He may be derived more or less directly from the figure of Bran the Blessed (!!!!!!) in the Mabinogion. In the Second Branch, Bran has a cauldron that can resurrect the dead (albeit imperfectly; those thus revived cannot speak) which he gives to the king of Ireland as a wedding gift for him and Bran’s sister Branwen. +The Lancelot-Grail cycle includes a more elaborate history for the Fisher King. Many in his line are wounded for their failings, and the only two that survive to Arthur’s day are the Wounded King, called Pellam or Pellehan, and the Fisher King, Pelles.

now, what I said last year in that meta was:

then there’s the entire part where galahad (or whoever else in his stead but it’s galahad most times) heals the fisher king and saves the land which turns fertile again, but whatever, point is: asoiaf is a deconstruction of tropes, right, well sorry but I’m eating my own hat if bran isn’t a fisher king deconstruction where the wound actually makes him powerful rather than weak and where he definitely won’t need anyone to *heal* him, while at the same time he is tied with the (his) land directly and he embodies it and most of the magic storyline. and the fisher king is one of the main tropes/legends in western literature/arthurian mythology, if you have that kind of character in your book then you are not planning for them to be a second-rate player.

now, admittedly back then I was envisioning a finale when bran was either king in the north or in some similar position and not as endgame king but if we take the show finale for granted because as the other anon said it made no sense for d&d but it was george’s ending and they had to make it happen without understanding it.... well. actually:

if bran - ie deconstructed fisher king who becomes powerful because of his wound and doesn’t have to be healed by a knight to make the land fertile again because that wound gives him power - becomes actual eventual king it’s the full circle of that trope’s deconstruction because his wound means the eventual salvation of the entire continent, which works perfectly to bookmark how that specific scenario is turned on its head;

the problem is that d&d can’t write bran for shit and turned him into the heartless robot/3ER who might or might not have schemed the entire thing and didn’t make him do shit for three seasons because they can’t handle the magic storyline and then at the ending mAGICALLY we have king bran first of his name, but in a coherent version done by grrm and not by them where bran has his eye-opening experience beyond the wall, doesn’t magically lose his personality when he becomes the 3ER, keeps his sweetness and empathy after risking to lose them (which was his adwd storyline), helps greatly during the long night thanks to the fact that he’s a powerhouse and is eventually recognized as a savior of the realm in its own merit, then......... it’s actually very much coherent with grrm’s themes to have him become king, but not because he knew all along and played mysterious until now and whatever the fuck else, but because it’s the coronation of his entire storyline which starts with sweet young boy who just wants to be a hedge knight and then ends up saving the entire continent making the best use of what he has after that’s taken from him while using his connection to the magic roots of the story/to his land/to his family for the good of the entire realm, and that was a damn good story - sadly it’s not what d&d chose to tell except at the end;

edmure and yara were badly written but that entire scene was badly written and well-acted sadly, like no one objected because no one will object in the book storyline, given that ^^^^ happens, in the show they just basically tried to find a way to make it halfway plausible but it looks dumb because it’s badly written and it’s copypasting an endgame for a story that d&d have not adapted, but basically you had to buy that bran was it. it made no sense but like... what made sense, this episode’s salvation was the acting and that since the endgame was half grrm’s it wasn’t as shitty as 8x05 but like within itself it was incoherent af;

that said I think that bran being king + the small council being more or less what it was in the show (because LIKE HELL that’s brienne’s endgame like brienne is def. not going into any kingsguard in the books unless george smoked weed when he was writing acok/asos/affc) as in made of all discriminated categories in westeros or discriminated people in westeros after the throne’s destruction is absolutely a thing grrm would do, because basically we’ve gone from badly suited kings with a small council that’s basically the westeros equivalent of old white republican men to a realm where the king can’t walk (but can fly! ;) ) and the rest of the small council is a) a disabled man who’s been abused to hell and back all his life (REGARDLESS OF TYRION’S FAULTS let’s just look at the strict facts here), b) a former commoner who has been a lord for years but couldn’t read when the series began (davos), c) another former commoner (bronn) [note that both davos and bronn are former *criminals*/come from a really poor background, not from the wealthy side of the commoners], d) a woman who is also a knight ie something that pretty much disregards the entire status quo from before (brienne), e) sam who let’s all remember is a noble but was sent to the wall by his father because his skills were in his brain and not with swords/fighting/whatnot and who also was abused to hell and back when he was young - like, both the only nobles in it that were born nobles were disadvantaged and felt that on their own skin so they aren’t out of touch with the rest of the continent (sam was at the WALL where the only nobles go there for lack of options but it’s basically a glorified prison X°DDD). like, that is an ending I can absolutely see grrm going for because it’s basically the revenge of our forgotten-from-s1-and-dnd cripples, bastards and broken things that start the show the way they do and end it on top of things. that is absolutely a thing I can see grrm doing (with some changes bc again I really doubt the books small council would include bronn and brienne). the problem is that d&d wrote it like crap.

but bran becoming king and that being the general idea? I absolutely can see it same as while I was on team jon gets the throne and hates it before if this is how it goes... well, since I’ve been saying that if he wanted to be happy he should have just gone back beyond the wall if that is his actual endgame I have no issues with it. hell, it’s way better than the one I had envisioned for him for that matter.

that said bran being evil is a theory that makes no sense, it’s just that d&d can’t write him and they managed to make him look like an ass if we assume he knew everything from before. but like. it’s them being unable to write that story, not the story in itself being invalid or making no sense, because with the book elements we have.... it makes a hell of a lot of sense.

they just had to write it and they didn’t.

[gaarfielf]

k im gonna throw in my hot take on part 5 now i think the time has come where i’ve watched enough of the damn series i can make a coherent essay on whats what on what (putting it under a read more bc this shit is gonna be long and i dont want my followers to suffer too much)

I’ll do this character by character starting with the new ones

Ami: I’m having a hard time deciphering whether she’s being underutilized or over utilized because number 1) her character isn’t interesting enough to have her keep coming around, especially when her only connection to the group is Lupin. She hasn’t had any interaction with Goemon or Jigen that i know of and she hates Fujiko for ??? reasons. That being said, I would’ve preferred if she was fleshed out more because 2) literally having her be the distant girl that is quiet and doesn’t understand social norms is..... really boring. It’s almost as boring as having a female character whose only there as a set of boobs... (coughs). She isn’t interesting because they didn’t make her interesting, yeah? It’s hard to hate a character based on the fact alone they were clearly written by a man but I mean it very literally when I say she could’ve been something great. Having her confess her love to Lupin was straight up disgusting and I really expected more from tms in that vein. Putting romance where romance doesn’t need to be is bad enough let alone when you jack knife it in between a child and an adult. And for those of you saying ‘Oh hhhh she’s like nineteen’....look into your heart. Even if she is 1) she sure as hell doesn’t look it and 2) Lupin is like 40-50. In the wise words of me, children loving adults was a myth made up by pedophiles in support of the devil. Npot to mention pitting her against Fujiko because they both like Lupin?? I ain’t even gotta explain why that’s a pathetic excuse at writing. But I will. Fujiko is a grown ass woman so why the fuck would she care and Ami is a child who shouldn’t be in love with him anyway. She has truly been nothing in the series except a tool and even at that not a likable one.

Yata: Do I even have to say that I can’t write anything about a man who hasn’t had more than 4 minutes of screen time in the last 24 episodes? He was hyped up before the series started and he’s done nothing but be Zenigata’s personality in the place of Zenigata y’know. Actually speaking and having one for himself BUT WE’LL GET TO THAT LATER. He’s done nothing but yell and cry over literally nothing? Like he fights Zeni’s fights because for some reason Zenigata got super lazy this season (again, we’ll get into that later) and he’s just a pointless character.

Albert: Gay rep for life haha just kidding he was bad at that too. I think they literally introduced him as faux-gay rep because they know the fans wanted more sensitive interactions from their already existing male cast members and they were like ‘well that’s gay so we’ll give them this guy’. And speaking on behalf of myself - ‘I don’t want these’. So Albert shows up, supposedly having a HUGE connection to Lupin’s past and then............we never see him again. And they literally tell us nothing about him except he’s gay and works in the government. Apparently when we say ‘we want gay rep’ they hear ‘very minor gay character??’ and didn’t hear us say ‘no’ back. And every time I hear anyone say 1) ‘well, his connection to Lupin is supposed to be a mystery!’ I can feel hives growing on my skin because i’m allergic to bullshit like if they weren’t gonna tell us the connection, and whatever the connection is didn’t reveal anything new about the character outside of ‘Lupin knew somebody that wasn’t Jigen when he was younger’ then why?? mention it?? why make an entire arc dedicated to not telling us something if the end result was ‘it doesn’t matter who he is’? 2) ‘well they’re obviously cousins’ except they obviously aren’t. if they obviously were, they’d say that they were cousins. like if y’all are digging up bits of the manga from 40 years ago to say ‘there was a character who had the same last name’ but are also out here saying ‘Jigen doesnt have a sister bc they said that over 40 yers ago and haven’t mentioned it since’ then I ain’t got nothing to say to y’all, you’re just dodgy and ain’t worth the stress of talking to. 3) ‘they’re maybe gay’ well the cool thing about gay rep is that we don’t give honourary mentions out for series that were too cowardly to actually come right out and say it. So in conclusion, Albert was written by cowards who couldn’t decide what to do with him.

Enzo: Boring. That’s literally all I have to say. Trying to give him depth by making Ami his daughter was predictable and not at all interesting. To be honest I completely forgot she was looking for her dad anyway because she didn’t seem to care that much about finding him either (or seem to care about anythign really). He’s a shitty villain and every time he speaks I got my finger on the right-key because I don’t care what he has to say and so far I haven’t missed anything good so yeah. Just disappointing.

I think that’s it??? For new characters?? So I’ll move onto the main cast

Jigen: I 👏 WANT 👏 JIGEN 👏 TO 👏 DO 👏 SOMETHING like good fucking God the man hasn’t done anything this whole series up until 24 where he got  5 minute scene dedicated to him killin’ cops (direct action) but like?? As a character he hasn’t progressed he has BARELY spoken and we’ve learned one new thing about him the whole series in the episode where he meets the daughter of a woman he used to work with. And that one thing that we learned was: he used to work with the mother of this girl. That’s it. Episode 24 he got a little bit of dialog with Lupin that I guess was supposed to be like character development but it was so weird because it was kind of directed at the audience?? So it’s like is he talking to me or to Jigen because if I was Jigen I would not have one goddamn clue what he was talking about. Also, he’s so depressing this season?? Right up until now we’ve seen very little personality from him aside from Angry and Complains a Lot. He smiles sometimes sure but like he doesn’t exactly have a lot to smile about this season considering he’s not really in the limelight anymore and is only brought back to foreshadow how much he hates technology and wants to retire. Personally, Jigen is one of my favourite characters and the fact he hasn’t achieved much this series is a big let-down

Goemon: I can’t even imagine how let down Goemon fans feel because again, up until Episode 23 he did nothing. He had an episode where he fell in love?? With a girl?? Disguised as a woman?? For some reason?? It was in one of the throwbacks and I’ll admit that maybe the episode made sense and I probably missed something but to me I had no clue what was going on. ANYWAY like his big scene in the spotlight is 3 episodes before the end of the series (its not like he’s a main character or anything) and he cuts Lupin. Because he thinks that he isn’t really his friend. That’s it that’s the only reason he almost murders his friend. Just kidding the other reason was that it was a half ass attempt at shock value to make sure the audience was still paying attention. They can’t seem to decide this season whether they want Goemon to be edgy or stupid but I think we’ve gotten a greta big helping of both so thanks tms /sarcasm/. They’ve really just dragged his character through the mud this season because he used to be stoic, mysterious, traditionalist but lowkey clumsy guy and then now he’s. I don’t even know how to describe it he’s just become so cutesy and edgy at the same time so we get him cutting Lupin in half right in front of UwU i eat my fish skin first ! I’m quirky ! like what am I supposed to feel about this grown man? He’s really too back-and-forth for me this season

Fujiko: I’M GONNA GET HEATED ABOUT THIS ONE SO BUCKLE UP I’ve never seen Fujiko written this poorly since TWCFM (yes i’m outting that as a bad series too so don’t @ me about that lil tidbit). She’s there as a piece of eyecandy bUT SHE IS SO POORLY DRAWN IT MAKES ME WONDER IF ANYBODY AT TMS HAS EVER SEEN A WOMAN IN THEIR LIFE TIME. Seriously her proportions are so off and outwardly repulsive looking it makes it hard not to skip anything she says in the series on account of how half-ass her character looks. Not limiting herself to being visually repulsive, she also has a half-ass personality. Suddenly Fujiko isn’t the come-and-go as she pleases, mysterious woman that gives Lupin intel on very high security operations she’s just. There. At some point in the series she said ‘a woman’s body is just a tool to get something she needs’ and I wanted to puke this is NOT Fujiko’s character at all and I’m disgusted that they’re brushing her off as a pair of walking talking boobs. Also her absolute lack of empathy is just mind numbing because they’re somehow trying to convince the audience that Lupin broke her heart due to wedding related reasons that still haunt her but? Seeing him cut almost in half does nothing for her? And then she deadpan ‘This is just how it is’ like this is just putting her in such an evil light that I hate because I love Fujiko! In every other season she’s fighty and sarcastic and witty AND NOT JUST THERE FOR EYE CANDY. And going back to the wedding thing, why is this being made into such a big deal? There’s literal episodes in other seasons called ‘Fujiko Doesn’t Look Right in a Wedding Dress’ ‘Fujiko Doesn’t Want to Be Married’ ‘A Ring Is Like a Trap’ like she 👏 don’t 👏 want 👏 to 👏 be 👏 married 👏. And the preview for the next ep shows her in a wedding dress so I’m ultimately preparing myself for the big season finale being them getting married.

hurray.

Final thought on Fujiko being, the episode where she picks up Lupin to save him from succumbing to his crossbow wound (easily the funniest thing thats happened all season) I mean. Yeah it’s kinda cool. I don’t really have any strong feelings about that like I’m not about to praise them for something like that when it was immediately followed by her and Ami slap fighting over him again.

Lupin: In my days of watching Lupin movies/specials my slogan was ‘if the ratio of screen time in the movie between characters is 10:0 in Lupin’s favour then it ain’t a good movie’ and it’s ringing true to this season where it’s all about Lupin. I understand obviously it’s a series called Lupin III like I’m not stupid but the amount of ass kissing to his character is something else like they’re putting him on this huge pedestal like he’s a do-no-wrong kind of guy to the point where he’s boring because he’s done nothing wrong. Ever. He doesn’t argue with anybody he doesn’t have any strong emotions really (outside of that episode where Zenigata loses his memory we see him outwardly angry for a minute). It just makes him such a dry character when they try to mold him into being absolutely flawless and admirable. Also the amount of faking his own death and ‘oh no is he gonna die’ moments are just not entertaining. Like I said earlier when he got shot with the crossbow that was the hardest I’ve laughed in a long long time. It played like an SNL skit (you know what one). And again we aren’t learning anything new. Whose Albert to him!? We never got to know, What’s his relationship to Fujiko!? We’re probably gonna find out they’re getting married last episode after all the touching moments they had together this season like.... like uh.... when they uh... oh right they’ve barely spoken to each other all season. And when they did they were arguing. Love is in the air huh?

Zenigata: AI’ll try to keep this brief but Yata’s taken over his character this season. He’s barely spoken, he has like, NO energy or determination. After the episode where Lupin faked his death (the first time, not the proceeding 90 times) Zenigata just stopped appearing and stopped doing anything productive. If anything his character became an excuse for an info dump. Like oh we see a war torn area whats going on? Zenigata is conveniently nearby to say ‘these people are at war!’ and then outside character will tell a 18 paragraph history on him of whose at war and their history and then Zenigata says ‘okay’ and doesn’t appear again for the next 2 episodes.

Now for the closing thoughts I guess

i don’t know why they’re looking at Lupin having plot as separate from Lupin being episodic. Like they’ve separated him from adventure so he’s just doing the same things over and over again. Not to mention like I said earlier, the fans wanted to see more sensitive interactions between the already existing characters, and if anything, they’re farther apart and just really confusing and contradictory. It’s hard to get through an episode when every week its another ‘great time for another plot arc they’re never gonna finish’. When I watched episodes of Part 1 and 2 and 4 (not so much 3 because i can’t find anywhere to watch it lol) I’m pretty attentive all the way through because the series drops tidbits of information about the characters and they make the episode enjoyable to watch. This season is so dreary and dry I can’t find anything to enjoy about it because it’s just one disappointment after another. I’m trying to to sound bitchy as I type all this out but I mean I’m speaking as a fan who is just really disappointed. I know I’ve said ‘disappointed’ a lot in this whole thing but there isn’t another word to describe it because that’s really the way that I feel about part 5. Seeing my favourite characters on screen is supposed to make me feel happy and excited to see where they’re gonna go and what they’re gonna do not make me think “I hope they don’t ruin this character for me’ in every. single. episode. This season has been underwhelming, unenjoyable, inconsistent and just really exhausting to me overall.

i gotta go eat now so peace out and if you read to the end of all this then hopefully i’m not the only one in this boat but if you don’t agree with me then i guess thats just how it is yeah?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the callbacks were cool at first but now I just find they’re baiting me into thinking i’ll enjoy the episode because i’ll find something I liked from one of the better seasons in it. They’re just really overused at this point because these callbacks aren’t being used for anything. like ‘lupin is making his plan at the cagliostro castle!’ like. why. ‘detective melon is also angry at lupin!’ but if she isn’t like teaming up with zenigata or actually doing anything to find him why should i care.