The Swordsman's Standard

Okay okay, I'm back, goddamnit. Who among us hasn't taken several years off of a passion project that they do for free to finish grad school and work full time? Anyway, here's how I planned on introducing season seven when it first came out:

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"Well, here we are again. Season seven came and went, so we’re left sitting around for over a year trying to figure out what just happened.

 

I maintain that both the quality of character dialogue and character intelligence have gone downhill ever since the showrunners have left the books for totally uncharted territories (Let’s all stand in a circle and take turns giving dramatic monologues!) But I don’t think anyone actually cares what I think about writing.

 

If you’re new to the site, I recommend you check out the rules and guidelines that I use to judge battles and come up with my tier list. I also recommend you read my first round of rankings, in which I grouped seasons one through five, to get a better idea of how each group first came together. My tier assignments aren’t necessarily a linear spectrum broken up into groups, but each tier has a different shared characteristic or theme. For example, I initially placed Jon Snow and Grey Worm into tier four because they were both well-trained from sparring situations but notably inexperienced in actual combat.

 

Unfortunately, we didn’t see a single one-on-one duel in the entire season. Not a real one, at least. Everything has gotten so Hollywood now — we have plucky groups of heroes against an innumerable horde of nameless enemies and no one important ever dies in battle. The closest that we get are Arya’s training sequence with Brienne and the brief skirmish among the Greyjoys and Sands, which resembled a pro wrestling match more than anything else.

 

I factored those into my rankings, and you can also see my initial thoughts on each of the season’s battles. After each episode ended, I finished my drink, ran to my laptop, and ranted a bit about each scene. Beyond that, you can see my more thoughtful analyses of some of the battles." 

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Now that season eight is almost upon us, I'll keep things short. Back when season seven was new, I wrote longer analyses of the Greyjoy naval battle as well as the attack at Casterly Rock, so I'll publish those as I wrote them. Beyond that, I'll add extra analysis as I go over the new tier list.​

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Cheers.