God, watching those scenes from earlier seasons is fucking painful. It had to be obvious to them by 5 that they weren't up to the task of continuing this show. Like, there's no way you go from that to the drop in quality without that self realization. I know this because they realized this themselves when they admitted by the beginning of season 6 there would only be 2 more even though HBO wanted 10 out of them, and why 'season' (lets be honest, these six episodes aren't a real season) 8 is the last.
Fuck, they probably knew when they were in the middle of season 5 that they could strongly adapt material they had, but doing an outline was basically out of their skillset. I mean, when you look at the four seasons, it makes sense. They were brought in to adapt, and they really did do a good job, 4 seasons of great television. Its not their fault Martin was a stupid fat fuck who didn't focus. Most of the blame really lies on him, honestly. I mean, books take awhile to come out, but over half a decade? You can't predict that shit. They figured they had enough time to wait for another book to give them 2-3 seasons of material which maybe meant a year and a half between seasons so they had four years, maybe five for the final one.
Martin didn't even give them one to work with. I'd say a lot is his fault too. Don't get me wrong, its theirs too for not passing it off because they had to know in Season 5 it was NOT working. You can't go with these books and all these detailed plots and prophecies and chaos-theory consequences, spending time diagramming them out, white-boarding them and then going from all this detail, to what, an outline? How are you supposed to do that? So I expect this was where that frustration and dislike of the show began. And dislike of Martin, because his ass was supposed to put out a book for them to work with.
I don't know, maybe they asked HBO for an out or maybe HBO didn't want them out. Usually show-runners do leave when this sort of thing happens, sometimes a part of their creative team leaves and they're like, 'Can't do this with another person, bye'. I think part of the problem was that Game of Thrones became such a fucking juggernaut, they felt obligated (And obviously the paychecks didn't hurt). HBO also didn't want to risk 'trouble in paradise' by having the show runners leave after there were no more books. Because could you imagine that shit? It would send a very, very clear message 'This show is completely fucked without a thousand page omnibus to guide us through this crap'. Who would you get to fill their place? I mean, money wise, sure. But most creatives are going to hesitate to jump into something like that. And the clusterfuck of plotlines? You'd need like a year to untangle that shit with a new creative. I imagine HBO was unwilling to send that message and risk any sort of delays with the money the show was bringing in.
Also, if you switch D&D out, everyone notices and you get blamed if the next season sucks. So, HBO probably did not, under any circumstances, want them out. Despite the fact that they were out of their depth and clearly could not handle working without book material. I mean, you can just feel them wanting to get out of Game of Thrones. In the later seasons. Its more than the money, maybe. We're contemplating that there was no internal pressure from HBO to keep them going. Like, 'you're here forever'. I mean, finishing Martin's story for him was not the job they signed up for. They were never there to make something wholly original. I mean, they weren't forced to stay it might have been encouragement, more money or even something like 'Nice career you go there, shame if something happened to it'. Or just top shelf booze every day just to force themselves to finish this shit. D&D clearly did eventually have some power though, since HBO wanted 10 and they only did '8'.
Why did season 8 take so long? Because they fucking hated doing it and felt forced to do it. When you're forced to do something you really don't want to, it takes a longer time to complete. It also shows how fucking terrible it is.
I feel like D&D can't be fully blamed for the current state of GoT. When they're given material, they do shine. Somewhat. Without it, they fall apart completely. If you write a great book for them, I have no doubt they can adapt it. Some people are just like that, its like translators. Just think about a translator gets asked to translate the novel series from one language to another. He's great at it, interspersing words that are as close as possible to the original, using the differences in languages creatively, interpreting tone and characterization for a different audience. Then all of a sudden in the middle, 'Oh hey, sorry, but the author is moving slow and the company needs these books out now. You need to write them.' A translator, while skilled creatively, does not write from scratch. So all of a sudden it becomes something great to a garbled fucking mess. That's what happened here.
In my order of blame: GRMM for failing to deliver constantly, HBO for pushing forward even though D&D couldn't handle it and D&D themselves for not just hiring skilled people to help them or requesting them. But they were most certainly not oblivious about their failings. If they were, they would have just done the 10 seasons.
I know, defending D&D at this point is weird, but look at those first few seasons. They were good at their job as translators. I mean, we're all not here because we originally fucking hated the show. But that's all they can really do, translate material from page to screen. They can't do stuff from scratch. And that's ok. In entertainment, you need skilled translators. It only becomes a problem in situations like these, where they run out of material to translate. It becomes an unmitigated clusterfuck.
But I mean, we're through the looking glass here, my fellow Kiwis. If these leaks are true, we are looking at the Mass Effect 3 event of pop-culture. We are looking at normies who are going to fucking melt down when Jon chops Dany in half and Bells drive her insane while her army just rapes and murders everything. My hope it is so horrifying, and so scarring, it pushes normies out of our space. Go back to watching friends and full house, you faggots. Leave our shit to us. Go the fuck away. Even if it doesn't, I'm going to be laughing my ass off as Rome fucking burns.
The fire is just starting my brothers and sisters. And it will be. fucking. glorious.
