Jump to content

Good Guy Garlan

Members
  • Posts

    9,376
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Profile Information

  • Upjumped Steward
  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Alester Florent's longhall, drinking Alester Florent's wine

Recent Profile Visitors

7,163 profile views

Good Guy Garlan's Achievements

Council Member

Council Member (8/8)

  1. This episode wasn't as terrible as the first, but it was a whole lot of meh. It was just exposition and repetition of stuff we knew already and all very plain and barebones. Overall, I'm like Missandei when Greyworm took off his pants, wondering "Where's the meat?" (And I don't mean the gross, infected meat like Jorah's. I mean like genuinely meaty scenes).
  2. The site keeps logging me out every time I turn off my tablet/laptop and then it doesn't recognize my password no matter how many times I type it. So basically I have to go through the whole "lost password" process every time I sign in. Any help?
  3. I usually enjoy the show for what it is, but this episode tested my patience. Between Tyrion's cringey comedy hour (he is just NOT funny), Edmure being an absolute dick, and Arya's extremely underwhelming payoff, this season is quickly losing most of the goodwill it earned in the beginning.
  4. It makes it look more forced, contrived and artificial rather than the natural, organic progression of the character. But that's just me and my opinion and I don't wanna derail the thread with this topic.
  5. I don't wanna derail the thread any longer, so I'll just say this: Cersei had every reason to be paranoid about Tyrion. Not only had she hated him her whole life, but he had just killed her father and her son (as far as she knew) after threatening her to her face, and he vanished without a trace, which means he wasn't acting alone. She also had every reason to be suspicious of the Tyrells, not least because of the coin Varys planted precisely to make her more paranoid. And the beauty of it all is that she's almost right about everything. Tyrion did kill Tywin, Varys really was hiding in the walls, and the Tyrells actually poisoned Joffrey and were trying to fill the Small Council with their own people. So it works well without the chessy ass prophecy. I'd argue it actually works better without it because her fear and paranoia would come from a wholly human place - her deep seated hatred of Tyrion, her jealousy of Margaery, her insecurities, her trying to hold on to Tommen for her own power, etc - rather than some unnecessary magical pseudo retcon.
  6. The Evil Queen was in charge of a kingdom, she fell apart, got herself jailed and her enemies pounced on her. Instead of a Walk of Shame she was forced to dance around in hot iron shoes until she died, but the element of punishment remained essentially the same. If there's a deconstruction at work, it's that we're seeing the story from the Evil Queen's perspective, but that's really not enough to justify the prophecy. I just don't see what's the merit of Maggy the Frog and all that.
  7. You're right, I guess he's more of an equal opportunity hater, like Trump. So that's a potentially interesting wrinkle we could scratch from his character. I too think this chapter is miles better than the dumpster fire that was Arianne II. Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that? But it also kind of makes me wonder if GRRM's bag of tricks isn't as extensive as we once thought. This chapter had a very real "been there, done that" vibe for me.
  8. That's not a deconstruction of the Evil Queen, that's literally the Evil Queen. And no, the prophecy doesn't mean Cersei more complex. It's reductive and ultimately unnecessary, as all the ingredients for her character were there and could've been explored far more organically instead of inserting a last minute prophecy to give her some motivations. For example, her hatred of Tyrion easily stems from the fact that he "killed" her mother during birth and because Cersei, always trying to be like Tywin, followed her father's lead in despising him due to his condition as a dwarf. You don't need some bullshit valonqar nonsense to make her paranoid. She was already paranoid. Ditto Margaery. She would've suspected Margaery anyway because of the coin Varys planted in the dungeons and because Cersei was going to be naturally jealous of anyone earning the love of the commoners and Tommen. There's no need for the Younger, More Beautiful Queen. That's GRRM spoonfeeding us unnecessarily.
  9. Exactly this. Cersei is a psychopath, but no matter how much GRRM tried to ruin her with the bullshit prophecy she's still retained some complexity to her madness. Heck, I can say more about Ramsay's character than I can of Euron's: he's got a chip on his shoulder about being lowborn and a bastard, he romanticizes his mother's rape, and he's particularly vicious against Theon because he's everything Ramsay is not. Like you said, even freaking Gregor has his blinding headaches, for crying out loud. I'm gonna take a page from Mr. Plinkett's book and try to describe Euron's character without mentioning his looks, gear or profession: He's...mad, I guess. Cruel...crafty, I suppose. He's...I mean, that's it. I'm drawing a blank. If I had a gun to my head, the most I can say about Euron (and even this is a stretch and a fanwank) is that he doesn't believe in gods (why? No fucking clue) and is (maybe? I'm guessing?) pissed about the whole concept of religion and belief, so he systematically tortures all these different priests to shatter their faith and then he hangs them from the prows as a symbol of the gods' nonexistence or futility. So he's basically a deranged philosophy sophomore student. But that's me fanwanking, actively trying to come up with something to fill the void that's Euron. Sure, he could go interesting places. There's some potential, but I'm not impressed with what I've seen so far.
  10. Yeah, apparently that's the level of sophistication we're dealing with here :/ Complicated = interesting for me In my opinion, there's nothing interesting about a moustache twirling villain who's evil for the sake of being evil and wants to - get this - rule the world. You can dress a one-note character in Valyrian steel, but it'll still be a one-note character.
  11. Riveting. GRRM spent all of two minutes creating the character if that's the case.
  12. For all we know he could join Aegon the Conqueror and juggle lemon cakes on top of a dragon. I'm basing my opinion on the information we have so far, not in what may or may not happen in the future.
  13. "The world". Well, that proves my point. Euron is The Brain, which I guess makes Victarion Pinky. I strongly disagree with the bolded, as non-POV characters like Stannis, Sandor, Tywin, Jorah, Margaery, Littlefinger, etc, are a thousand times more nuanced than POVs like Hotah, Quentyn or the Damphair himself. As for Euron's complexity, please elaborate on that because I just don't see it. What you quoted doesn't go into Euron's character per se.
  14. Well, I sure hope so, but this chapter does him no favors by pretty much saying he was a bad egg all along, that he was always a psychopathic rapist. Yawn.
  15. I don't have a problem with the fantasy aspects of the story, but there's just no nuance to Euron's character. Like, what's his goal? To conquer the world, seriously. What's his motivation, why does he do the things he does? I don't know, because his mad, apparently. That's a cop out and a lazy way out. He was always a bad egg, since he was young. And that's it. That's taking a potentially interesting and rich character and going for the easy way out: make it a psychopath. Just like GRRM did with Cersei in Feast. And sure, people like that exist, not everyone is gray, blah blah blah, but that's not interesting, that's not engaging. This guy's supposed to be the Final Boss, he should be a more layered character, there should be more shades to his evilness. He's basically Ramsay. Rape? Check. Systematic torture designed to strip the victim of his identity? Check. Casual violence? Check. Represents the degradation of the North/Ironborn by going backwards towards a more savage way of living? Check. Euron's smart while Ramsay's a brute, so what? Big whoop. I still don't know who the fuck is Euron, other than a psychopathic rapist. You wanna talk about plot gifts? Euron's got a dragon egg, a dragonbinding horn and a super cool Valyrian steel armor. People say GRRM is somehow subverting the Dark Lord trope with Euron? I think not. He's using that trope straight. Hell, Victarion of all people has more nuances to his evil than Euron, and through his misguided attempts to free slaves like Dany makes him a more interesting foil to her than Euron. It's funny, the more cartoonish and over the top Euron gets, the more interesting and layered I find freaking Victarion and Aeron.
×
×
  • Create New...