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[Spoilers] Rant and Rave Without Repercussion


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With the terrific battle that was Dany and Drogon's Fighting Debut in Westeros, I may take my Rant and Raving back down to only Nitpicks this week.  Then again, I've had more than a few minutes to think about this episode, cough, cough, so perhaps the novelty of that final terrific 20 minutes will wear off, LOL  Til then, here's some Nitpicks.

The idea of Arya beating Brienne, first off, is ridiculous.  Although, if you look at it, technically it was a tie, they could could have killed each other at the end if it was real.  They shouldn't have had Arya necessarily use Needle anyway.  I do get that they could have been going with what has always been Bronn's motto:  Dance around a much bigger person, wear them out, try and piss them off, then......move in for the coup de grace.  If they wanted to go with something like that, they shouldn't have had us wondering about the stupidity of the match up of the weaponry.  Just a thought.  Also, the idea of a smaller person doing the Wear Down The Wonder Woman......would have come off better if they had more room to range around.  Like The Mountain and Oberyn, like Bronn at The Vale.  Still, that's giving a huge benefit of the doubt, and I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO IT  

I do have some other nitpicks, like...........all the planes passing over head earlier today made me double take, as if it was Drogon, LOL  Cause yeah, the Spoiled Spoilers of War.......I've been dodging planes over head all day.  :P

 

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OK, the battle was a lot of fun, but lots of things wrong with it. First, the two big ones:

  • The whole point of this battle was to recover the food and gold taken from Highgarden. So Dany spends most of the battle burninating the supply train carrying that food (too late for the gold, but that's not her fault).
  • Who could possibly man this artillery piece? Maybe our artillery expert? Or at least a crossbowman? No, no, we need the best swordsman, because swords, scorpions, exact same skill set.

Also, it bothers me that the scorpion worked. Not as much as I expected it to bother me, but still, if heavy artillery can't pierce the scales of a full-grown dragon, how exactly can 1000-year-out-of-date light artillery do it? Qyburn didn't give us any implication that this was magical or anything, it's just a scorpion. You'd think someone would have noticed during, say, Aegon's Conquest, or the massive Rhoynar-Dothraki wars, that you could take dragons down this way.

And here's all the smaller things:

  • The gold being at the front of the train, and making it through the gates of KL before the battle, even though KL is nowhere in sight of the army… it's not really impossible or anything, but it's a hell of a coincidence.
  • Once again, Dany uses a single-unit army for no apparent reason. Why not bring her sellswords?
  • The Dothraki charge directly at a wall of set shields and spears. Two separate times. Even though Dany has already given them a break the first time, and the ends of the line have collapsed the second time. Maybe they were doing it purely to give the Lannisters a fighting chance?
  • I loved seeing archers, and finally horse archers, but they were used very stupidly. The Dothraki wait until their cavalry are already in the melee to fire into it. The Lannisters wait until the enemy cavalry is 2 feet away to fire, and then do nothing; they don't even bother trying to fire at the horse archers.
  • That's a convenient hill for Tyrion and the Dothraki commanders to stand on and get a perfect view of the entire field. Wouldn't it have been even more convenient to put archers on the slope of it?
  • Why are the Dothraki commanders, who lead from the front, standing on that hill with Tyrion instead?
  • Jaime twice stands around gaping with people fighting 10 feet away, and nobody bothers him.
  • Nobody but Jaime even looks at the downed dragon. Partly that's because Dany inexplicably landed in front of him after circling widely, but that's just as dumb.
  • Why does Jaime wait so long before charging at Dany?
  • Jaime's army, despite nobody rallying them, and their commander off to the side arguing about whether he should flee, decides to fight to the death instead of breaking and running for the hills.
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3 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I doubt we'll see her this season again, maybe in the last episode. She left for Volantis, which basically means she's out for a time.

Yup, that's them. But based on the dialogue, it seems the show has turned them into enforcers/repo men. Not surprising, considering the IB is in the slave trade business.

I choose to believe Mel is babysitting Ghost. And they are writing a dramatic play together in their downtime. Makes more sense than Arya beating Brienne. 

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10 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

The sparring match between Arya and Brienne was not well choreographed. Brienne used her reach maybe once, and she kept letting Arya close in. 

Oberyn and Mountain, all over again...

2 minutes ago, teej6 said:

And did anyone notice Bran seems more accepting of Arya? He hugged Arya back when she hugged him, while he didn't do the same with Sansa in the previous episode. Is that supposed to mean something?

I think that him learning to be prepared for Night King also means to accept the humanity. Perhaps they will do that step by step, so this was one in that direction. 

 

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4 minutes ago, teej6 said:

Yeah, to me it seemed liked Sandra was jealous of Arya in that scene. But I've given up trying to interpret Sandra's reactions or emotions coz one minute she loves her family and the next minute she's undermining them or wants to be Queen of the North.

I took it as she was scared to see what her sister had become. She laughed when she first heard the list mentioned. Then when bran said it she was taken aback a bit. Then when she saw her fight she realized that her sister is actually being serious about killing people on this list. At least that's how I saw it. 

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5 minutes ago, Jayc said:

She also shouldn't be able to wear people's faces and talk just like them. It's just not realistic. That and everything else 

The faceless men are ridiculous in general. Even in the novels tbh. I don't see how it can work without magic. 

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7 minutes ago, teej6 said:

 

And did anyone notice Bran seems more accepting of Arya? He hugged Arya back when she hugged him, while he didn't do the same with Sansa in the previous episode. Is that supposed to mean something?

I noticed the hug back too. Maybe he needs time to get used to being around normal people? He was pretty rude to Meera, but their conversation about "bran dying" was in interesting take. 

I'm wondering if Arya will kill LF with the dagger?

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Tonight we moved past Arya fanservice into straight Arya porn.

That fight was more fantasy than Dany attacking the Lannisters on a dragon.

It was one thing to see Arya dancing around and dodging with her god-damn plot armor smirk but there is no fucking way a 90 pound girl with a short rapier parries a hand and a half swing from Brianne of Tarth.  No fucking way.  And certainly not repeatedly.

Honestly I forgot the rest of my rant after seeing that.

Oh yeah, the hand-wavy magic that the gold had all made it into the city already, but the food? was still there in the wagons.  Which Dany both came to get and ended up burning?

I'm sure all of this will have been forgotten by next week.

I am going to give props to that battle.  I'm sure they spent a good third of their budget on that sequence alone, but it was worth it.

 

 

 

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Arya fighting on equal terms with Brienne? Yeah, right.

"There are always lessons in failures", bragged Jaime in the last episode referring to being ambushed by Robb, and then gets ambushed in the very next episode. 

I facepalmed hard after Jaime and Bronn decided to take out their anti-dragon ballista only after a dragon burned half of their army. Shouldn't that be your very first action when you are facing a dragon?

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The show relies more and more on deus ex machina and things become quiet predictable.

- From the dialog between Jaime and Bronn it was clear smth is going to happen to Bronn

- When they showed restin Lannister soldiers, it was pretty clear that shit will happen soon.

- If Dany burned everything, why sendind the Dothraki at all?

- Everything happening at Dragonstone was cringy: Davos flirting with Missandei, Jon glaring at Dany and all their exchanges.

- Sparing between Brienne and Arya was rediculous. Arya trained with Syrio  for a couple of months like 6 years ago. The Needle was made for 7 y.o. Arya, why didn't she outgrew it?

- Bran and Meera broke my heart. Will we see Meera again? At least they mentioned Hodor and Summer

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3 minutes ago, falcotron said:

OK, the battle was a lot of fun, but lots of things wrong with it. First, the two big ones:

  • The whole point of this battle was to recover the food and gold taken from Highgarden. So Dany spends most of the battle burninating the supply train carrying that food (too late for the gold, but that's not her fault).
  • Who could possibly man this artillery piece? Maybe our artillery expert? Or at least a crossbowman? No, no, we need the best swordsman, because swords, scorpions, exact same skill set.

Also, it bothers me that the scorpion worked. Not as much as I expected it to bother me, but still, if heavy artillery can't pierce the scales of a full-grown dragon, how exactly can 1000-year-out-of-date light artillery do it? Qyburn didn't give us any implication that this was magical or anything, it's just a scorpion. You'd think someone would have noticed during, say, Aegon's Conquest, or the massive Rhoynar-Dothraki wars, that you could take dragons down this way.

And here's all the smaller things:

  • The gold being at the front of the train, and making it through the gates of KL before the battle, even though KL is nowhere in sight of the army… it's not really impossible or anything, but it's a hell of a coincidence.
  • Once again, Dany uses a single-unit army for no apparent reason. Why not bring her sellswords?
  • The Dothraki charge directly at a wall of set shields and spears. Two separate times. Even though Dany has already given them a break the first time, and the ends of the line have collapsed the second time. Maybe they were doing it purely to give the Lannisters a fighting chance?
  • I loved seeing archers, and finally horse archers, but they were used very stupidly. The Dothraki wait until their cavalry are already in the melee to fire into it. The Lannisters wait until the enemy cavalry is 2 feet away to fire, and then do nothing; they don't even bother trying to fire at the horse archers.
  • That's a convenient hill for Tyrion and the Dothraki commanders to stand on and get a perfect view of the entire field. Wouldn't it have been even more convenient to put archers on the slope of it?
  • Why are the Dothraki commanders, who lead from the front, standing on that hill with Tyrion instead?
  • Jaime twice stands around gaping with people fighting 10 feet away, and nobody bothers him.
  • Nobody but Jaime even looks at the downed dragon. Partly that's because Dany inexplicably landed in front of him after circling widely, but that's just as dumb.
  • Why does Jaime wait so long before charging at Dany?
  • Jaime's army, despite nobody rallying them, and their commander off to the side arguing about whether he should flee, decides to fight to the death instead of breaking and running for the hills.

Some issues with your comments:

  • I don't know if you've read any book material, but during Aegon's attempt to conquer Dorne, Meraxes was killed with a scorption; also, not sure what heavy artillery you refer to, there has been no mention of heavy artillery vs. dragons; and Cersei fired the sorpion bolt through Balerion skull
  • Dothraki charging at a shield wall is not surprising; they are not particularly known for clever tactics; they hold foot soldiers in contempt; at the battle of Qohor they charged at the Unsullied twelve times before they learned.
  • I think the hill Tyrion was on was too far away from the Lannister lines to put archers there; and Dany didn’t have any foot archers anyway; also, I don’t know that the Dothraki with Tyrion were commanders, or just bodyguards.
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6 minutes ago, Snormund said:

The faceless men are ridiculous in general. Even in the novels tbh. I don't see how it can work without magic. 

In the book it's not all magic. Some faceless men use makeup, but if I remember right only two are suggested to be using legitimate magic. 

One uses illusions to make him appear like a rotting corpse, while another is a face changer.  

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Tyrion is way too conflicted to be Dany's Hand. He is a Lannister and that should have disqualified him in the beginning but now, even more so.

Yeah, Cersei gets her gold to prolong her ass on the Iron Throne for another year or so. Well past the palatable shelf life of logic. Same with LF walking around Winterfell. waste of time and space. Both should have been gone a long time ago or at least in Cersei's case, fleeing to Casterly Rock after blowing up the Sept. Seriously though, no riots in King's Landing to get rid of the Heretic because of that? No one has any spiritual faith on this show that is not a fire worshiper, face stealing serial killers or Bran/used to be but is now the 3 eyed Raven etc. UGH

Also, since when is King's Landing situated in the wild west of Utah, USA or something or other? I thought I was watching WestWorld for a minute there. That or watching a Clint Eastwood move. Bronn and Jaime are Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid or more like James "Handlacky" and The "Smartass" Jerk.

Bran being cold to Meera felt sad to me.

I do love it when Lannisters die. Too bad the Imp, Jaime and Cersei are still alive though, personally, I would love to see Dany burn the imp like her daddy did to his other Hands that were failures. This will never happen though but the thought is lovely to me. Jaime has no honor and is devoted to his sister's crotch. This should disturb everyone who knows anything about this show. Thoroughly disgusting and wrong in every way. Incest is bad and willing practitioners should not be applauded in real life or make believe makes not difference.

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What about the cave drawings? That seemed very convenient for Jon... here, believe my story because we found these ancient drawings that show you the army of the Dead are real. They even had blue paint for the eyes those clever children of the forest... is there even a forest on Dragonstone?

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3 minutes ago, Lurid Jester said:

In the book it's not all magic. Some faceless men use makeup, but if I remember right only two are suggested to be using legitimate magic. 

One uses illusions to make him appear like a rotting corpse, while another is a face changer.  

If it's magic I'm fine with it. 100%. This is fantasy after all.  But expecting it to happen without magic...

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3 minutes ago, A Ghost of Someone said:

I do love it when Lannisters die. Too bad the Imp, Jaime and Cersei are still alive though, personally, I would love to see Dany burn the imp like her daddy did to his other Hands that were failures. This will never happen though but the thought is lovely to me. Jaime has no honor and is devoted to his sister's crotch. This should disturb everyone who knows anything about this show. Thoroughly disgusting and wrong in every way. Incest is bad and willing practitioners should not be applauded in real life or make believe makes not difference.

This.

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17 minutes ago, Paid Debt Lannister said:

I NEED MY RANTING TO BE LISTENED

Lannister plot convenience that the GOLD MADE IT INTO KL AHEAD OF THE ARMY

So they wanted a huge fight, but at the same time they CAN'T FOR ONCE ALLOW TEAM CERSEI A SINGLE DEFEAT

So the gold made it into KL... OFFSCREEN?

And Daenerys burned FOOD? That should be hers????

This is fucking ridiculous. This show is so madly in love with Cersei that they're pushing all the edges as to how she will beat Daenerys

I do have to agree with this. The show is artificially setting Cersei up for every single win she can manage. It was my gripe with last week's entire episode. Everything that happened was done to put Cersei in a place that was ridiculous and so artificially crafted. The gold managing to make it to KL before the army is added to this, at the beginning of the episode when they kept saying "If the gold makes it/when the gold makes it." I thought for sure that Dany would end up catching it enroute and burning it all. But then...it still made it. 

Like you said they are in love with Cersei and know that she is the villain the fans love and they are artificially strengthening her position to make the showdown bigger between her and Dany. And it's ridiculous. 

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The one thing I didn't like in this episode was the continuation of the "bend the damn knee already" argument, which got even stupider this week.

Dany asks, "And you say you can't defeat them without my armies and my dragons?" Why? Is she thinking, "Well, I believe his story, and the entire world is at stake here, but if he thinks he might be able to win without my dragons, I can just take a nap"? If they're real, she obviously has to fight them.

But she follows up with "I will fight for the North, when you bend the knee". So, she obviously does think they're real--otherwise, she's committing her army to a pointless windmill-tilt that could seriously threaten the war on Cersei just to get the North. She'd just rather everyone in Westeros die than even consider allowing the North to even temporarily stay separate? Or is she "calling his bluff" to decide whether to believe him? No, because he's clearly not lying; the question is whether he's crazy (or just wrong about what he saw—he still hasn't given her even the basic details of what he's seen, so that's still plausible as far as she knows). There is just no scenario in which her tack is not stupid.

So of course the argument that follows is stupid. It focuses on Jon's pride—Dany even puts it that way explicitly, and Jon tacitly accepts that's the issue. But it isn't. Jon doesn't care about being King. As he said earlier, the problem is that he doesn't trust that the North have signed up to fight for a foreign Queen, and he can't afford to lose their support. Which has nothing to do with his pride.

And Dany's answer to that issue was also stupid. They'll follow her if he does? Why? Even if it were true, how could she possibly know that? But of course it isn't. A big part of the reason that they're following him is that they think he can deliver an independent North—hence the whole electing him King thing.

So, they're stalemated by their mutual stupidity.

If they really needed this argument in the show for some reason, it wouldn't be too hard to fix it: Have Dany say that if he can't convince the North to follow her, he's no King in the first place. Which may well be true, in which case they're stalemated by his lack of confidence in his kingship. But that's something that ties into his character. And it's also a plot point that can actually be resolved when D&D want to resolve it, instead of one they have to just repeat ad nauseum until they can suddenly drop it because now Jon and Dany are banging.

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