#i was gonna paint the whole thing but then it made me sad so GREYSCALE!!

[michaels-reality]

SHE THOUGHT BEING IN LOVE WAS ONE DAY ONLY! SHE MAD!!!

[Art descriptions: The first piece is a greyscale collection of three drawings of a fat Black woman with a light curly afro. She wears a spiked collar and a sleeveless black top. The first drawing shows her from the waist up with a tired expression. The second shows her from the waist up holding her face in her hands. The third shows her grabbing the chin of a second person, a thin brown person with white hair, as she leans in close. The artist’s watermark is visible in the centre. The second piece is a coloured version of this third drawing, showing that the first person’s hair is blond, and their pants are yellow. The second person’s hair is white with blue highlights, and their shirt is white. The artist’s watermark, Michael’s Reality, is visible in the upper right. \End descriptions]

(ty @/ a-captions-blog for the image ID)

[lesmotsincompris]

Thoughts on GoT S07E03

This time I didn’t take notes during the episode because I watched it on TV, so I forgot half the stuff I wanted to say.

It’s amazing how D&D can have so much going on—Jon and Dany meeting for the first time, Bran and Sansa reunion, the fall of Highgarden and House Tyrell, Dany losing so much of her strength, lots of revenge, lots of attacks...—and still make me feel so little.

To be more specific:

Dragonstone

Jon reached Dragonstone awfully fast, but I can assume a long time has passed between the end of last episode and the beginning of this one. What I have more trouble explaining is why Jon decided to go just with Davos (Jon says he must go himself because Daenerys is a queen and anything less than a king won’t do, but a king alone is not very impressive, is it?), how they traveled so far, or how they managed to do it on their own.

Daenerys and Jon meeting for the first time was supposed to be the highlight of the episode and one of the highlights of the season (if not the story as a whole), but the moment was awfully flat. It doesn’t help that I don’t like the show version of both characters, or that Emilia and Kit are among the least talented actors in the cast.

There was a lot of title dropping, praise for deeds or skills we barely saw on screen, and inaccurate westerosi history in a scene that lasted several minutes too long. I still don’t understand what makes Jon King in the North other than the writers really, really wanted it to happen, so there’s that too.

Jon showing up with no proof that the icepocalypse is real is beyond stupid. Why would anyone believe him? Was he counting on Tyrion to buy his story? Was that the best he could say to paint an accurate picture of the situation? On the other hand, the audience knows Jon is telling the truth, so all this talk of ‘bending the knee’ and Dany’s general entitlement were silly and irritating. On the other-other hand (back to my first hand?), if Jon truly cares about the war against the White Walkers instead of being king, he could just bend the fucking knee and get on with this already. How can I enjoy this scene when everyone on it sounds so dumb and childish?

It’s great to see Dany acknowledging that she was raped or that her father was mad, but this is quite far from ‘my sun and stars’ or ‘the usurper’ narratives that we’ve been fed so far, and we should have seen this development happening in our screens. It’s especially odd to have her so comfortable with the idea that her father was mad, since: a) show!Dany has her fair share of pyromaniac moments as well; b) if she admits Aerys was a terrible king, she admits Robert’s Rebellion was necessary. If she validates Robert’s Rebellion, doesn’t that mean she no longer has a claim to the throne? How does she fit all this in her head? We just don’t know.

Tyrion and Davos made most of the relevant talking and it’s great to see Tyrion doing something smart again. Still, I hate how he’s always the Voice of Reason™ for Dany, this time changing her mind about Jon. To be fair, my issue is not this scene in particular, but the pattern of giving Tyrion all the relevant decisions. Dany is the queen, we need to see her ability to rule and we need to believe that she deserves her position. If she’s shown depending on Tyrion for every move or being easily influenced by his ideas (no matter how stupid they are), her position feels unearned. At least we got that moment when she calls him out on his bullshit for his ‘wise words’, that was actually fun to watch and reminded me of book!Dany.

Varys was also acting more like his book self, which only proves that cutting Aegon VI is hurting the story more than expected. Not only it gives Varys split personality but also hurts Dany’s plot, King’s Landing, the Stormlands and the Reach… It’s interesting, I always assumed Aegon could be more or less cut without great losses and now I see that excluding him from the story demands more care than that.

People praising Sansa’s wits is a rare sight in the show (has this actually happened before?), but this time both Tyrion and Jon did it. The sad implication behind the idea that Sansa ‘became’ smart is that she ‘had’ to suffer all that bullshit in season five in order to develop this intelligence. D&D fail to see that Sansa has always been smart.

Melisandre’s scene was almost ‘now that I did everything the plot needed from me I can fade away so the writers don’t have to come up with a something for me to do’. It could be worse, she could be trapped in a stupid greyscale plot.

Dany says that Jon lost two brothers… How does she know that Bran is alive? I’m convinced there’s something like a Westeros Daily twitter account and all characters read it constantly, and that’s how they get information that would otherwise be impossible for them to obtain.

How did Jon expected to mine and transport all that dragonglass if there’s just him and Davos? Idiot.

Davos and Jon saying that Dany could have attacked King’s Landing only highlights the fact that she should have done exactly that. I am but a young girl and know little of the ways of war, but Tyrion’s plan falls apart with little examination. Attacking King’s Landing via dragon means Dany can more or less direct the attacks to military targets, thus sparing a lot of innocent lives. Besieging King’s Landing, on the other hand, will bring starvation, higher criminality, and other problems that will affect the smallfolk long before they affect Cersei and co. There’s also Casterly Rock: I understand the value of conquering the Lannister seat, but it’s not worth splitting Dany’s forces in half, especially when they don’t do the most basic research about current Lannister strategy.

Of course, all that implies writers who actually care and are capable of writing meaningful conflict. We have D&D instead, so the only reason why Dany doesn’t attack King’s Landing is to save the confrontation with Cersei for whatever episode replaces the 9th episode this season.

Winterfell

I’m not gonna lie, I enjoyed seeing Sansa being a good ruler and using her skills. This is the first time in ages that show!Sansa does anything resembling book!Sansa.

What I don’t understand is why Littlefinger keeps following her around. I barely see a reason for him to be in Winterfell, let alone this. The platitudes he says in the show never made a lot of sense, but sound even worse after D&D destroyed his image as a skilled political player with the season five fiasco.

I actually enjoyed seeing Sansa and Bran reuniting. The show made me feel things! Positive things! With book characters that I like! Omg, what am I watching?

Oh, no, wait, I’m watching Game of Thrones. Not only Isaac Hempstead-Wright wasn’t allowed to emote, the writers had Bran reminding Sansa of her wedding to Ramsay in the cruelest, most uncomfortable way. Considering there were tons of other useful information Bran could have shared, making us revisit this scene in particular feels like a middle finger to critics of the Sansa Marriage Strike.

They also tried to hand-wave the whole Winterfell inheritance problem, with… zero success, honestly. For starters, Sansa says that Bran is ‘the Lord of Winterfell’, not the ‘King in the North’, as if the latter was not disputable. Except it totally is? Jon wouldn’t be an option if the Northern Lords knew Bran was alive. Plus Winterfell is the seat for the King in the North, so being Lord of Winterfell while there’s a King in North means you rule squat. It doesn’t matter; Bran dismissed whatever inheritance based on the fact that he’s the Three Eyed Exposition Robot now. As if that meant anything, you know?

I still don’t understand how Bran went from ‘having visions through weirwood trees’ to ‘divine omniscience’. Have they ever explained this?

Oldtown

I said last week that Jorah outlived his narrative purpose, but that’s especially noticeable with the greyscale plot. If he dies, then eh. If he survives, then eh, so what? Is he gonna go back to Dany? What can he offer her that any of her several advisors can’t? Thankfully he’s not gonna get the girl, so the best he can hope for is dying a heroic death. But, you know, that could have been accomplished without all the screentime we lost with this subplot.

King’s Landing

Where to start?

Why is the smallfolk cheering Euron? Do people actually buy that the septsplosion was an accident? Didn’t they establish in S07E02 that everybody knew it was Cersei? Why isn’t everybody rioting against her? The smallfolk can’t be that stupid, or they would be writing HBO shows.

I’m glad that in three years at least one person reacted to the fact that a zombified Gregor Clegane is serving Cersei Lannister. Thank you, Indira Varma, for being too good for this shit and remind us of the better days this show had.

Carol the tiger mom and the uber villainous Cheryl merged together in a single scene to give us Ellaria and Bad Pussy’s torture. Now there’s only Cersei, the villainous tiger mom. I wish I could care about Bad Pussy Snake dying, but this means less Dorne on screen, so hooray?

(honestly, I’m barely certain Bad Pussy Snake is supposed to be Tyene. She could be Brown Ben Plumm for all I know)

Of all the plot threads in all towns in the world… they bring back Tycho Nestoris. And a Braavos that profits from slave trade! D&D are not just showing the middle finger to book readers, they’re pulling their pants down and making a dickopter on book readers’ faces.

Speaking of dicks, do you think D&D have learned what it means to have sex with a person after they say ‘no’?

Casterly Rock

Is Casterly Rock an important military target? If you say ‘yes’, I must wonder why the Lannisters were willing to lose it so they could attack Highgarden. If you say ‘no’, it means Tyrion lost Daenerys half her fleet and a good chunk of her fiercest warriors out of sheer stupidity. It’s a win-win situation for show detractors!

How did Greyworm’s fleet arrived at Casterly Rock and never crossed paths with Euron’s fleet? How did Euron’s fleet sneak attacked them and nobody saw it? Shouldn’t the Unsullied be more disciplined in a fight? Why would you imply the current generation of Lannisters built Casterly Rock when the book explanation for Tyrion and the sewers works so much better?

(was that special lady tunnel an allusion to the book tunnel connecting the Tower of the Hand and Chataya’s? I know I sound crazy, but D&D have the weirdest ways of ‘adapting’ the source material)

I like the concept of this attack that never was, but factors like Tyrion’s narration, the unimpressive look and resistance of Casterly Rock, or Euron’s teleporting fleet make the execution far less effective for me.

Euron is Ramsay 2.0, now with a rockstar look and even less personality!

Highgarden

That was a crazy fast travel, huh?

Diana Rigg is a great actor, but I confess I lost track of this dialogue a lot. Like, I wrote my main impressions yesterday one hour after the episode and I could barely remember what they were talking about.

I just remember Olenna trashing Cersei for being the worst, but Olenna killed a child (a monstrous child, but a child still) and framed two innocent people for it, one of them another child, and she shows no remorse. So you know what, fuck Olenna.

Extra notes

Honeypot: Euron’s fleet can teleport because he built it with magic trees that teleported to the Iron Islands after Yara stole their original fleet. So the wood has magical teleporting properties, allowing the whole fleet to teleport too. Ta-daaam!

No, really, the teleporting (and not just Euron’s) was wild this time. They clearly don’t give two fucks about consistency anymore.

The main problem with the show at this point is that we can’t ignore what came before. Dany’s or Jon’s speech feels flat because Dany and Jon have been remarkably incompetent at their leadership roles. Ellaria and Tyene’s demise doesn’t touch us because Ellaria and Tyene are murderous jerks and little else. And so on.

There’s so much that is just vomited onto the screen, with little to no care. Look at Euron or the non-battle at Highgarden. D&D cheat in favor of their villains, their ‘shocking twists’, their fanservice moments, or that aberration they call plot. They care less and less, and we have to stop rewarding them for shitting in the glorious profession of writing.

The nicest thing about this episode was trying to explain the concept of hate-watching to my parents and see my mom recognizing the name “Game of Thwo” (my parents don’t speak English in the slightest, so it wasn’t that bad).