#epic text moment

[esteemed-excellency]

I FUCKED UP

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[gardeniacat]

Sometimes it's just a mentally ill boy/girl/person and their gaggle of favorite fictional characters that keep them alive.

[chibishortdeath]

Yo omg I just got to the part of the game with my wife and my husband ahskfkshajdksjwjwkda I am so excited to meet them in person—

[judesstfrancis]

next thing u know they're gonna announce that m*ke fl*nagan is doing a reboot of beloved 1983 horror film sleepaway c -- I am shot and killed before I can finish this post and thereby speak it into existence, saving the timeline from unquestionable horror and tragedy

[lvlcurrent]

this event was such a breath of fresh air, we need more chara specific like this =w=)!!!

[doodlingwren]

Can't believe that my fucking train is once again running 1 hour late because someone stole all the fucking copper from the railway line like omg stoooppp why are u so silly ahah stop making this prank it's too epic ahahah

[synthaphone]

im pretty sure that the chili dog is completely deaf at this point. the tests i conducted involved squeezing a squeaky toy both near and far away from her, neither of which prompted any reaction (previous reaction to squeaky toy noise: chili materializes in front of you and NEEDS what you have squeaked)

[lpslopbunny112]

I love toys I’m so happy they exist, it makes me sad when I think of how kids now are just glued to their iPads and technology and stuff... Some of my best life memories are playing my with brother with our toys, we made epic stories and worlds and characters, It’s something that influenced who I am today so much. I only stopped because my brother was losing interest and playing alone just didn’t feel the same I guess… I remember when my brother started getting really into video games and id be like can we play a story and he’s like no can you play this game with me instead and like sometimes I said yes but deep in my heart I always felt sad because I enjoyed playing with our toys way more bc anything could happen. In video games like.. stuff was already programmed in and there was little sense of story in most of them (EXCEPT for paper Mario which was the reason I loved the game so much, it’s still one of my favorite games in the world. ) I love story games I think that’s obvious. Idc about gameplay I just like characters.

[icemanzek]

“Casual” Friday, you say? ha. Call me back once we reach a ranked competitive Friday

[seafoam-64]

A smile drawn on a window. In some where and some place in the past. Forever was stuck in my drafts until today i release it from its purgatory. A smile in the sadness of the rain.

[esteemed-excellency]

[tineymang]

i talked a bit abt this before and i decided to just go with it! so Wahoo i am making posts talking abt my guys now :] i have so many thoughts about them

SO when i was thinking abt things i would post abt team epic squad i figured a good place to start would be thru describing some of their personalities! like a lil introduction post yk.....

also heres their reference posts!! in case anyone was wondering who was who

team epic squad

lumi

circuit: somehow, despite everything that happens in eos's story, circuit remains quite possibly the goofiest guy ever. a guy that can endear even the most hardened of dark future pokemon (dusknoir) they love to crack jokes, and will often jokingly tease their friends too. theyre not incapable of taking things seriously, but because of their tendency to cope with things through humor, it can come across that way. they can be very impulsive, often jumping straight into situations without thinking about the consequences beforehand. they are also very stubborn, even moreso then a certain grass type partner of theirs. they have many hills and they will die on All of them. they're almost always at either 100% or 0%, and there is little to no inbetween. in general, they're always loud and out there, and have no problem with making their presence known. some pokemon tend to be offput by them on first meetings, but they don't let that stop them (mostly). though, despite how open they tend to be emotionally, they don't really have the right words for talking about some of the things that bother them. without a proper outlet for their feelings, circuit mostly just attempts to ignore those thoughts in the hopes they go away. this, unfortunately, does not work. whoopsies! mello: in stark contrast to her partner, mello is very reserved. she's prone to anxiety and overthinking, so she often prefers to do nothing at all instead of messing up like she fears she will. in conversation she's generally pleasant and polite, but she's more relaxed and casual with pokemon she's comfortable with. she's not a natural at picking up on social cues, but has learned how to from repeated practice. she doesn't have a lot of confidence in herself, and has problems saying no to people. in spite of many pokemon's first impressions of circuit, mello always admired how they were able to be so open in a way she couldn't. over the course of eos' story, she slowly starts gaining more confidence in herself. her anxiety never fully goes away, but she learns how to manage it when it does come around. she also starts writing a journal following the events of temporal tower! she finds it's a good way for her to express her feelings in a healthy way. as she gains more confidence in herself, she also becomes more comfortable expressing herself! she gets very passionate about the things she's interested in, and she can spend hours talking about them. she can get very absorbed into her hobbies, to the point where she has trouble pulling herself away from them. all in all shes just trying her best :]

stripe: though stripe has never had much of a pronounced presence within team epic squad, that doesn't make their role any less significant! she's much more of a listener then a talker, and tries to prop up those around her. they can be pretty objective, and most of the advice they give tends to follow suit. they like to be punctual and organized, and can get irritated if things are in disarray. in general, she's always been one to want to slow down and appreciate the lesser noticed things in life.

mana: they take a lot after their parents! they can be like what seems like an endless fountain of energy, always finding something to be excited about. they're very empathetic, and have a strong sense of right and wrong. despite what some may assume of them, they can also be very observant when a situation calls for it. though, another thing mana gets from their parents is an occasional penchant for mischief. sometimes, this includes intentionally risky activities mana does specifically to give circuit and mello a heart attack. mana insists they're able to handle themselves, though!

luna: having been around for over 100 years now, luna has seen many things. but despite her age, conversation is not exactly one of her strong points. she isn't very used to having casual talks with other pokemon, and often comes off as stilted and overly formal as a result. she's polite to a fault, and there's little that can shake her from her cordial front. though, if something were to draw her ire, she can be very.... intense. having spent so long trying to prevent darkrai's world of darkness, luna struggles with knowing what to do now that darkrai is no longer a danger. she feels the need to constantly be doing something to help, even over her own needs. she's uh. she's got a Lot going on i'll tell you that much

lumi: despite being at an age where she's able to speak, lumi often chooses not to. instead she will usually communicate through various emotive sounds, or just by nonsense syllables string together. she has a strong sense of adventure, and is endlessly curious about the world around her. she pretty much needs to be supervised at all times, or else she'll be wandering off by herself to go explore the unknown. she gets nervous whenever a trusted adult isn't nearby, which she does not realize she inadvertently causes by walking off on her own. it can take her a while to warm up to new people, but once she has decided she likes someone she will stick to them like a koala.

[chibishortdeath]

HEHEHEHE I BEAT IT WITHOUT A GUIDE IM SO PROUD OF MYSELF AND MY HORRIBLE MEMORY THAT IM GONNA GET HUMAN EQUIVALENT OF CAT ZOOMIES YIPPIE!!!

(Also silly screenshot of a glitch I ran into that made only half of two block load in lol)

[sleepingtimber]

Another entry in the therian diary cause I'm trying to figure something out

Wake up babe, new kintype just dropped? Maybe? I actually dunno for sure, but I may have found another aspect of my alterhumanity I didnt know about???

I got jumpscared with a possible kintype. And the problem is, I know there's no one way to be nonhuman, but I feel like it contradicts my other identities. And it also contradicts itself a little? Which shouldn't matter, if it is who I am than it isn't wrong of me to be who I am. But I'm feeling self co cious about it for some reason.i need to do digging and figure it out before I get lost in the worry sauce but still. It's very confusing, idk exactly where to start with it. I'm unsure how much I want to talk about it outright cause I'm in a wary mood about divulging details, but I need to put it somewhere before it overtakes my brain.

I was really out here thinking I was simply a canine soup (+robo dog but thats also kinda canine?) and link/stel haver but I may have uncovered another layer of iceberg :"D Though if it's correct, it certainly reframes my understanding of my robot dog kintype. Not in a bad way, it's just interesting.

[silver-horse]

and “cullen” was trending on twitter and lots of people thought that this is about edward cullen and something twilight related has happened lmao

and bonus funny...  JK rowling tweeted “Thank you, Greg 💕”   

yeah with a little heart 🤣🤣  

because he was working for Hogwarts Legacy and decided to do some ass-kissing and defend poor poor helpless lady joanne. the fair lady needed a knight in shining armour larping for her honor

(well technically I believe the larping happened after bioware didn’t like his tweets in defense of rowling but still... you get the gist of it. He also tweeted shitty comments about retiring bioware members. just out of the blue. and so bioware was like ”hey do you think you will ever work with us again if you behave this way?” and that’s when he started whining in character!! as cullen!! about his free speech and said that he is getting cancelled and called for the support of cullenites)

God. Remember when Greg Ellis went insane and started larping as Cullen on social media after getting publicly fired from ever working at Bioware again on twitter?

Sometimes when I'm feeling down, I think about that and am reminded that while we live in a bizarre hellworld, it occasionally conspires to be VERY funny.