[S01.E03: Empire State of Mind]

That dick was certainly campy. I’m surprised they didn’t sharpie in a little smiley face on the head so that the thing could talk if needed. 

[S01.E06: Somewhere Only We Know]

The dinner was awful. But my suspension of disbelief was on the rocks with Sasha sleeping with Brad at all. Much less dating him. So unbelievable. 
Please. Someone else who’s nursed a friend through an abusive boyfriend while trying to wait patiently for her to catch on to just how big a jerk this guy is chime in here. As the agony aunt you HATE this guy. So much that even years later your instinct would be to shoot him not schtup him. And that’s before we get into the fact that sleeping with an ex is against the women’s codes. 

[S01.E08: This Must Be the Place]

On 7/7/2021 at 7:00 PM, Angeleyes said:

She literally went to school to learn about this. Plus, her friends too who gave her terrible advice. All the psychology people in this show were the worst. 

@Angeleyes 

This exact thing occurred to me too. Thank you for getting it on the table. It’s an old joke to say that psychologists are often as screwed up as their patients, but usually not so messed up that they can’t identify the patterns and the cycles of dysfunction especially when they’re as classic as Brads patterns. The show ultimately made Brad so awful in terms of emotional abuse that you find yourself wondering exactly why Billie wants to blow up her marriage for this guy. Yes, I know in reality that people sometimes do exactly that, but if you’re going into that kind of territory you’d better make sure you make it believable.
I once had a friend tell me that abuse just felt normal to her in a way that her lovely husband never felt normal even though she loved him. Even though she was grateful and amazed at his every kindness. She never felt normal or I suspect that she completely deserved her kind husband. So, she cheated occasionally (yes, the sex was bad/boring with the nice guy) but she didn’t blow up her marriage to do it. Which brings me to: 

On 7/7/2021 at 3:59 PM, Blakeston said:

I think it's hard to feel chemistry when you can't stand one (or both) characters. And I couldn't stand Brad after seeing that ridiculous stunt with the subway train. He endangered her life just for the sake of endangering her life, without her consent. If she had been a little more reluctant and hadn't followed right behind him, she would have been toast.

It's like the concept for the character came from an alien with a completely superficial understanding of what women are attracted to. "Make the earthling tall, with long hair and an accent, and give him a large appendage."

I feel like they intentionally cast an actor to play Cooper who looked like a Ken doll that was left out in the sun for a little too long.

I mean, he's obviously a good-looking guy. But am I the only one who thought his appearance was just a bit...off? Superficially handsome but not particularly attractive?

I think the writers wanted us to resent Cooper somewhat, so that we wouldn't hate Billie for blowing up the marriage. So they cast someone short (Hollywood code for "not sexy") and blandly handsome, and made him seem smarmy as hell in that recruitment speech that somehow won Billie over when she first met him. 

If that was their goal, the joke was on them, because he still ended up being far more appealing than Brad in spite of all of that.

They really emphasized Cooper’s shortness didn’t they? Even though it’s my understanding that many Hollywood leading men are shorter than we expect. 
I agree that they wanted us to resent Cooper a bit but for me it wasn’t his bland Ken doll looks that did it, it was his superficial perfection combined with the superficial sexual jealousy. 
Brad ended up being so awful that I wondered what was so appealing about him. His hot cold I don’t like you as much as you like me power game only takes you so far. Then his outright verbal abuse across the relationship and his nastiness after the miscarriage and when he was expected to behave a bit normally when they went to where she grew up? He was so bad that I ended up wondering just what his appeal was. And I’ve had both passionate relationships where it was everyone’s primal and primary needs running the show and the usual codependent dysfunction fest. A show really exploring this stuff would have been really fun. 
All we got was “Doh! The guy has a scary big dick.” How is that sexy? For women I mean. 

[S01.E08: This Must Be the Place]

Well, I made it to the end. I made it to the end. The awful thing here is that I’d love an exploration of passionate love versus the adult compromises we all have to make. And I don’t just mean the choice between marriage to a Ken doll versus orgasms and a B list New York social life as interpreted by this show. In this show, Sasha’s storyline could have been a contrasting subplot in different choices if any of these characters were actually human. 
 

Yup, I ended up pretty much hating this show and I was looking forward to loving it and having fun with universal themes explored in a smart and racy way. This show is the very opposite of that. 
 

And the last scene? So she gets to have her cake and eat it too? Until she’s caught? And says a line that is usually a chestnut reserved for boring, cheating men from bad fifties melodramas? Seriously, I’ve seen more realistic characters and dialogue back when my bestie and I used to actually play Barbies. Shit, Barbie and Ken might be less plastic than the people portrayed in this travesty of a show. I just wish somebody’s little brother would come along and catapult all of these people somewhere far, far away after he removed their limbs and set them on fire. 

[S01.E03: Empire State of Mind]

Ok, the penis shot was beyond the beyond. The idea that a big dick is all that’s needed to put a woman in the throes of ecstasy is just ridiculous. And the size of whatever that was would make most women cross their legs and think of cystitis/bladder infections. Sexual passion has nothing to do with the individual body parts involved. It has to do with the chemistry of the people involved. Yes we all like pretty people but irl, attraction is quicksilver and impossible to predict. I guess this show  is what happens once the pornification of society is complete. Even the tried and true conflict between passion and marriage can’t be explored in any adult way. 

[S01.E02: Down in the Tube Station at Midnight]

Trying to populate the episode topics. Ok, it’s official, all of this seems like the fantasy of a narcissistic teenage girl. 
The woman is unbelievably beautiful and no matter which guy she chooses he will be rich and handsome and willing to go the extra mile for her in every way, including sexually even if the husband Ken doll needs the occasional reminder to make sure he tries his hardest sexually. 
And the beauty of the woman is the sine qua non that fuels everything, women don’t even need a personality as long as they’re beautiful enough. Yes, this kind of thing is taught to women starting at birth, but nobody writing this mess seems even marginally aware of what a portrait of absolute narcissism that this show portrays without insight or irony. 
I was looking forward to a genuine look at the yearning for passion and idealized romantic love in contrast to marital and familial love. This is like a sheltered sixteen year old girl imagining both states but with no experience of either. 

[S01.E07: Small Town Saturday Night]

Well, at least the swinging wife is a good actress. I noticed her knowing, teasing little smirk back in the beginning when she babysat for Cooper and Billie as Cooper tried to process what he’d read while also trying to fix it. I thought she was flirty with Cooper then, no surprise that she wanted to suck his dick at a swingers party. 
 

Jeez, the more I find out about Brad’s behavior from eight years ago, the worse he seems. Even if you’re full of crazy and self hatred. 

[S01.E05: The Sound of the Suburbs]

I thought that the dinner double date was an idea beyond bad too. Can you imagine how you’d actually feel in even similar circumstances? 
I questioned who was writing this in my post for the first episode because so many things in the writing and setting and characters just seem so unrealistic. Not that sexual passion is a rare flower and one that doesn’t generally bloom in long term marriages or marriages deep in the child rearing trenches. That has been a rich vein to explore for writers since forever. 
Well, it turns out that this is based on a memoir and a series of four roman a clefs written by a former psychologist. I’m stunned and kind of squicked, not because of the sex but because everyone and everything here seems so shallow. Beyond shallow, people who’ve never known pain or emotional damage to such an extent that a good life isn’t enough. 
 

I keep going back to that dinner. First, your best friend doesn’t sleep with THE ex, the ex that you will always love a little, the ex that broke your heart, the ex that will forever bring a range of strong emotions. That ex. No best friend would sleep with that ex, no matter how many years had passed. And any best friend worth her salt no doubt hates the SOB because it’s the bestie that has to pick up the pieces after the ex has had his way with everything. Also, passion with one woman doesn’t necessarily mean passion with all women. People aren’t generally universally pleasing to everyone. Sasha sleeping with this guy makes absolutely no sense and that making no sense kills the forward momentum of the plot. Brad and Billie couldn’t just run into each other in the city during one of Billie’s rich woman city field trips? That’s more believable, the city unfolding in origami; that actually happens in city life. 
And nobody, nobody would want to go to dinner with their spouse and their ex lover for whom they still have feelings. Nobody. And the dude tries to screw her in the bathroom? The point of a sexual passion is that you’re getting the passion and the intensity of the emotional and spiritual love as well as the physical. 
Honestly I’m a bit horrified that the show and the books it’s based on and apparently the lives it’s based on are so shallow. Not only do I have very little sympathy for the characters, I’m praying that people like this don’t actually exist. 

[S01.E01: The Wives Are in Connecticut]

Well, I’m still watching. And I do have an understanding of the tension between passion and stability. True sexual passion is it’s own kind of love (unsustainable as Sasha tells us) and has an effect on us like sugar crack heroin. 
That said, my confusion was in the timing. I understand that stay at home moms can be frustrated, bored, overwhelmed and overworked, not that we saw a lot of that in Billie’s too perfect life but mothering and wifing is difficult. Even cosseted women are often dissatisfied when women’s stereotypical role as a slave member of a sex and reproductive class is made explicit. The only problem being that we see none of the difficulties that women actually face in this rendition of a wife mother. The subtext is all wink wink nudge “this spoiled bitch is complaining about nothing” when IRL, women do in fact have genuine reasons to be going full tilt crazy even in the gilded cage. It’s just not portrayed here. 

Its literally the physical timing that ruins the illusion for me. Billie has a baby still nursing and that looks to be between four and seven months old. Usually the issue in this part of the post-partum period is a complete lack of sexual desire (especially with the oxytocin levels inherent to nursing and other hormonal changes) with a husband panting after a months long dry spell and the conflict between the husbands needs and the baby’s needs.  This often brings problems to a marriage and the needs of the mother, sexual or otherwise are nowhere in sight. Most mothers at this point aren’t filled with desire hormones but love and bonding with the baby hormones. Yes, everyone is different, but my suspension of disbelief snagged here first. 
Finally, in some agreement with the first poster, Billie’s life with Cooper is too perfect. The children are cherubs. The house is practically type cast from the serious East Coast upper class American dream. Cooper is understanding and steady and good looking into the bargain. Cooper than tries to address Billie’s dissatisfaction. There isn’t enough conflict to justify yearning after the best lay of your life except as a masturbation fantasy. 

Im going to watch all of the episodes, but I’m going with great concept (women really do yearn for passion) but bad execution. Billie just comes off as a spoiled bitch whose beauty entitles her to everything and that is a very male view, even of the conflict explored. I’m wondering if whoever wrote this has ever met a woman much less the kind of woman who ends up in the top dating and marriage bracket. 

Bottom line? I would have been thrilled, thrilled to watch a show that explored the conflict between passion and stability in ways both serious and fun. That would have been summer tv yumminess. This show is emphatically NOT that. 

[Flack - General Discussion]

I agree that the nasty son desires Caroline as part of his stew of overwhelming emotions regarding her but I can’t see Caroline ever sleeping with him. She just doesn’t hate herself that much and sleeping with him would do nothing but allow him to vent his hatred on her in triumph. It wouldn’t get Caroline anything except contemptuous humiliation. She has it right when she says that she’s going to war and in this particular war no part of the battlefield is in bed. I’m not saying that Caroline is above using sex in different circumstances but this is the wrong situation. 
 

[Flack - General Discussion]

I’m loving this show too. The women are smart and competent, even when they’re falling apart. Who’s writing this? Because the show really does have a grasp on just how bad the backlash against women is while at the same time showing us women’s heartfelt reactions to the circumstances of their lives. 
And all of it with the tried and true, trick and trashy hook of celebrities behaving badly and the fixers who janitor up the mess in our increasingly insane culture. Flack is kind of brilliant. 
Was anyone else shocked by Robin’s betrayal in the final episode? I have to say that boss lady is the last person that I’d betray. And was the final shocker a metaphor too far? 
Did anyone else love the scenes between Caroline and her ex husband both when he broke the news and in grief tinged longing at his funeral? 

[S01.E06: True]

I feel like the scales have fallen from my eyes in terms of this show and it is Not a comfortable feeling. I’ve hated it from the beginning and this episode combined with the truncated season and the turns on a dime in terms of storytelling and viewer expectations is just rude. And I was excited for this show, even after the continuing revelations about Whedon’s behavior. I never thought Whedon was a feminist, even though I like his work. C’mon, anyone who feels they need to make a show to tell us that brainwashing people and forcing them into prostitution might be wrong from an ethical standpoint clearly hasn’t advanced very far in terms of worldview. Whedon always excelled at great characters and worlds and those are all missing from The Nevers. All of HBO’s horses and all of their men in the form of acting, direction, costumes and sets can’t hide the fact that Whedon has devolved as an artist and that The Nevers is all hat and no cattle and completely lacks heart and coherence. 
We didn’t even get a full season, unforgivable on a premium network and the new show runner, no matter how talented is stuck with not only tired Whedon tropes, but a show that lacks sincerity on any level. I believe that the time travel “twist” is the new director’s attempt to fight her way out of the mess that was left to her and I don’t think it can be done. The fantastical doesn’t have to be real but it does have to be true at heart. This is why so many loved the rest of the Whedon television oeuvre, not because all of it stood up to rigorous moral analysis, but because the characters touched our hearts and the worlds suspended our disbelief so that we could enter. 
The Nevers felt like an assortment of fan fiction writing prompts from the beginning. An epic fail on any number of levels and I feel bad for the people who worked hard on such terrible material. Even HBO’s production values can only do so much to disguise the smell of the latrine. YMMV, but reading the confused posts over six episodes, I don’t think so. Everyone’s intuition is reacting to the cynical lack of heart and collection of stereotypes and stock characters while their eyes are fooled by the pretty of the production. 

[Season 8: Speculation and Spoilers Discussion]

18 minutes ago, Raachel2008 said:

My point is that I don't think Dany being cruel and ruthless is sexist. Are female characters supposed to not be evil? They should always be right? Smart? Brave? Courageous? They cannot be scared, or angry, or violent, or feminine or princess like?

Or the problem is because a fan favorite crossed that line, said fuck it all and unleashed hell?

Yes, women can be evil and power hungry and corrupt. I've already stated this other places in the thread. Yes, we've gotten clues before about Dany being willing to cut corners ethically. The Unsullied spring to mind. 

But Dany, according to the show, went crazy because the North didn't immediately give her adoration on the Mysha level and further because Jon Snow won't be her boyfriend. Not the loss of Missandei or the dragons or the bulk of her armies, but because this just looks like Dany is in a snit because she isn't the prettiest girl in the seventh grade. No examination even of the issues with restoring deposed dynasties. Just basically Dany pouting and because she has a dragon her pouting includes the slaughter of innocents. That is what is sexist (not to mention plain bad) about the writing. 

[Season 8: Speculation and Spoilers Discussion]

21 minutes ago, mirandroid said:

Ugh. The only thing that would make the ending worse for me would be Arya using Missandei's face to kill Grey Worm. 

Oh for the sevens sake, please don't give them any ideas. It would be a bad replay of Wesley's death on angel. 

[Season 8: Speculation and Spoilers Discussion]

10 hours ago, lucindabelle said:

Nah. Just do what I plan to, mentally call them The Last Battle. I’ve reread all of the chronicles of narnia many many times except for that horrible “Heaven is better but Susan doesn’t go because she likes pantyhose” which also ended with a literal train crash and Aslan ex machina. That book I think I’ve read a total of twice. 

Except we didn’t see small folk dying in long extended shots of anybody but dany.  We HEARD about Dothraki rape. Never sW it. So no. It’s not balanced as far as representation. There’s a world of difference in a visual medium between characters reporting and is seeing, and it was done deliberately. The horrors of war were talked about and never show- until now. Very manipulative, as was the tragic heroine edit cersei got complete with luminous pale lighting, teary delusion and sad cellos.

I love TCoNarnia too lucindabelle and hated The Last Battle even when I was a little girl. 

You make a very good point about the viewer being manipulated by the visceral scenes of war in The Bells. For all that this show has veered to spectacle once source material was exhausted, these war scenes showed the suffering in a way we haven't seen. And it is to support the madness of Dany narrati

I would have watched the scion of a deposed royal family slowly go insane while pursuing a pyrrhic restoration with relish. We weren't shown this, even with some of Dany's more questionable choices and actions. I never thought Dany would rule Westeros - too obvious. 

Ditto with Jon Snow. I wish they'd left Jon dead after his Ceasaring. I always thought it would have been very interesting to have Jon revealed as Azor or the PtwP and then watch mere humans meeting an existential threat WITHOUT their mythical, mystical messiah figure that gives them their only chance of victory. Plus cope with the loss of a person. That would have truly been trope busting. As far as I can tell, Jon Snows only virtue is being pretty and that is starting to pall. 

Though I know people who consider him a favorite too, so go figure. 

[S08.E05: The Bells]

13 minutes ago, RobertDeSneero said:

I think a lot of viewers didn't get that because they seem to think Dany would never attack innocents when she was already planning on it in the show.   It was edited in a way so that people who thought of her as the good savior of Westeros were supposed to miss it and be shocked by her actions.

Just to be clear, I've never thought of Dany as a savior and I never thought she would sit the Iron Throne, too easy in the trope bending Martin was trying. The business woman in me hated how she cheated to acquire the Unsullied, even if she was freeing slaves in theory. Me, I wonder just how free the Unsullied can really be. 

i would have no problem reading or watching the making of a tyrant, but the characterization and motivations have been sexist and inconsistent. I'm not bothered that Dany is bad. I'm bothered at the reasons given.

[Season 8: Speculation and Spoilers Discussion]

1 hour ago, Raachel2008 said:

I understand what you are trying to say, but I dont agree the reasons the writers have shown are *sexists*. Danny has always been consistent in her motivations - sit on the Iron Throne - and her loyalty, if we can say so - to her own narrative: the last Targaryen, the rightfully heir of the throne.

We've seen since the beggining that she could be ruthless and impatient, just like Stannis - and several other characters. Yes, Dany has good qualities and so did Stannis. Yes, Dany crossed a line, consistent with elements of emotion and personality. Those traits were on screen. This is the case with Danny, and the how and why was on screen. 

I agree - I DO agree - that it was rushed and maybe not organic, but there are people, like me, that had a lot of trouble watching Stannis burning his own daughter who he we all thought he loved more than anything. But he did not. Same with Dany. We all thought that she would never burn innocent people and she did. Why is it sexist, because she is a mass murderer and he 'only' killed his own daughter? 

OR giving the female character the power, the reasons AND  the agency to do so is not empowering in a way? 

You aren't the only one who had trouble watching Stannis burn Shireen. I was screaming at the television: "Dude! Any God that demands sacrifice, especially of a child is a God to be fought, not worshipped."

The difference is that I understood exactly how Stannis got to that point, history, character and circumstances . It was all clear and consistent. It was the same with Cersei empowering the sparrows and then burning the sept; it wasn't right by any means but it made sense in terms of Cersei's personality, history and circumstances. 

With Dany on the other hand, her motivations in these last episodes are basically bitches be crazy combined with her love of Jon and the loss pushed her over the edge. It isn't consistent even for a character who wants conquest. The seven kingdoms aren't conquest to Dany but restoration. Even with the horrific losses Dany has borne, I'm not certain that adding to the dead makes sense in the situation and the reasons given are trite and sexist. Sexism isn't just about education or wealth or power or position. It is about whether women are viewed as fully human. People who aren't seen as fully human? Their minds, emotions, reasons and motivations are often seen either as a mystery or as cliches. These writers can't really write a female character unless she is either a bundle of cliches (Cersei loves her children) or a proto man (Brienne and Arya are warriors and are thus comprehensible.) What an actual female warrior might be like is left unexplored. 

[Season 8: Speculation and Spoilers Discussion]

8 minutes ago, stagmania said:

This is at the top of my list of disappointments with this series. The biggest mystery in the books, the key to unlocking the central prophecies, the reveal that the whole damn thing hinges on - and they totally squandered it. We have no sense of why they did what they did, or who Lyanna, in particular, was. Why did she run away with Rhaegar? Did she care about the chaos and destruction she was causing? Was she oblivious? Did she try to do anything to fix it before her death? We'll never know.

That's not how this works. His story about a woman ruler doesn't exist in a vacuum - it's part of a whole literary tradition of women characters and the misogynist tropes used to define them - and you can't just remove it from that larger context. His choice to depict a powerful woman in this way plays into those toxic tropes, and it was a choice. 

Let's assume his ending is the same as the show's, with Dany massacring innocents for no reason after the city is already hers. In that scenario, he has two core protagonists, the ice and fire of this story - one male, one female. His decision was to make the man noble, honorable, morally upright and deserving of power because he doesn't want it, and the woman unstable, erratic, ambitious to a fault and ultimately paranoid and hysterical to the point of madness. That depiction follows a long misogynistic tradition that he has chosen to play into.

Personally, my hope is that GRRM's version of this plot doesn't play out in quite this way, that Dany's actions are better motivated and that her characterization is far more nuanced. I want to believe he's a smarter writer than the show ending makes him seem.

Yara getting no real ending is a serious bummer. If they had done the King's Landing battle right, she would have been part of it and gotten some closure on Euron.

This is all interesting and brilliantly stated. The prophecies that fans have been analyzing for years? Yeah, go ahead and ignore those. 

Not only Dany, but many of the other women were written with misogynist tropes. I love Arya, but she is a "not like the other girls" because she likes boy things (and is too ugly to be a lady, like Brienne) and is therefore written as proto male. 

I'm bummed that Yara doesn't get an ending,vat least not so far. Yara's loyalty to Theon was something I liked. 

I thought I would be happy to get any ending because I don't think Martin is going to finish his books, but I'm not happy with this CGI spectacle that can't stay consistent with the characters. 

oh and I hated the dropping of Jaime's redemption arc with no explanation. I don't mind so much that Jaime failed but that it wasn't explained and that the real reason seems to be D and D's obsession with Cersei. Why would anyone get the warm fuzzies for Cersei?

[S08.E05: The Bells]

1 minute ago, mac123x said:

I'm watching the Burlington Bar reaction videos, and another meta-nitpick jumped out at me.    These episodes were touted as being longer than the usual hour, but how much of that additional time is due to:

1.  Excessive slow-motion

2.  Pregnant pauses that stretch on-and-on (specifically, waiting to hear the bells ringing)

3l  Montages (often slo-mo also)

Seems that these are close to 1 hour long episodes stretched in editing.

Clearly the writers didn't want to be bothered actually writing something. Two of five episodes have been pretty much dialogue free. 

[S08.E05: The Bells]

3 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

I just want to cosign this entire post.  If I have to pick one, Jaime Lannister is my single favorite book character.  I've been trying to explain to my nonbook reader husband why I've taken what the show did to his story in these final episodes so badly and you hit on a lot of it. 

It's not even the final end that matters so much to me but that they didn't even try to connect the things in any organic way that showed that it was more to it than just being a jerk who rode off in the middle of the night to go die with his creepy incest twin.  My preferred ending for the entire Lannister mess has long been Cersei either locked away forgotten somewhere or dying completely alone knowing that everybody is either dead or left her because of her own choices and that her brothers went on without her beyond the reach of her toxic influence.  But sticking with this particular ending, had it been told in a way that made sense and let it breathe it still could have worked.  For every redemption story, there's another story of someone who does fall short of overcoming the things that made them, even if it's just a few yards before the finish line.  Had Jaime's time in Winterfell honoring his promises to be "the man I need you to be" and finally finally! breaking free to love a woman whose love did bring out the best in him been strung out over several episodes of a regular season, that could have been amazing to watch when the news of Cersei's imminent defeat stirred up all of his former demons and self loathing and that sense of prior claim.  There's an ultimate truth in it being really difficult for most people to break lifelong patterns even when they know full well how destructive those patterns can be, just as there's truth in just love alone not being enough to save you.  There's your tragic ending.  We shouldn't be sitting here days later guessing if that's what he's doing or he's going on either a rescue/murder mission or if he fully understands he's choosing to throw away everything for something that will destroy him.   Instead, we're left to try to deduce all of this from Jaime and Brienne's tortured final scene that ends up being played much straighter than the storytelling normally is.

I'm not a book purist by any stretch.  For awhile, I've been resigned to the idea that we'll probably never see the last books and I was going to be okay with the show telling us how it ends because hey, an ending is still an ending.  But this is just terrible on multiple fronts as the rush rush rush to put a bow on this thing is trashing many of the characters and stories that made it worth telling in the first place.

noDorothyParker - I'm screaming yes in agreement like Sally in the deli scene. I loved your take on human failures in breaking toxic patterns as exemplified in Jaime. Again, an actual life issue for many people including me and worthy of narrative examination. I'd love to watch that. Instead we got this hot mess. 

[S08.E05: The Bells]

19 hours ago, Notwisconsin said:

Arya is dead and she's going to join the seven.

I wondered while watching if it was a death hallucination ala Incident at Owl Creek Bridge. You aren't alone, but wow, if the last episode shows Arya's death in KL, I think the internet might break. It would at least give Jon motive to kill Dany if Arya was killed with the innocents of King's Landing. 

[Daenerys 'Stormborn' Targaryen: The Breaker Of Chains, Mother Of Dragons Etc]

50 minutes ago, Maximum Taco said:

Something should be said for being prepared. 

Dany was returning to Dragonstone with Drogon and Rhaegal, she didn't expect to be ambushed (that's what makes it an ambush), and was flying a slow meandering course back home in order to plot the downfall of Cersei. Was this stupid of her? Most definitely, any reasonable person would have expected Cersei to be planning an ambush when she vacated Dragonstone. But if you take into account that she was ambushed it makes the success of the attack make much more sense. 

In Star Wars they talk about accelerating to "Attack Speed" because obviously the faster you are going the more difficult it is to hit you. A healthy Drogon flying at top speed and attacking from cloud cover and using the sun to obscure people's vision, and wheeling and changing course on a dime is obviously going to be more difficult to hit then a wounded Rhaegal just trying to get home to Dragonstone to rest. The Scorpions are definitely powerful, and should be respected, but a prepared Dany exposed their weaknesses mainly being they take a lot of time to change where they are aiming and a lot of time to reload. 

The very fact that nobody, nobody even considered the possibility of an ambush given Cersei's actions and ambitions is the problem. You don't have to be Eisenhower to at least consider it as a possibility. And if everyone was too shattered to consider the tactical situation, then the argument that they needed rest before dealing with Cersei is that much stronger. I understand what an ambush is. I also understand defensive tactics and strategy and this just makes them all look like morons. At this point, I don't care who sits on that ugly throne. 

[Daenerys 'Stormborn' Targaryen: The Breaker Of Chains, Mother Of Dragons Etc]

On 5/13/2019 at 7:51 AM, jeansheridan said:

I also want to give Dany some credit for using Drogon so effectively against the weapons. Using his speed to confuse the scorpion shooters mounted on the walls was smart. They were too heavy to pivot fast. She did get lucky against the Iron Fleet. But again, using the sun against them, understanding Drogon's skills, her own willingness to fly through a broken gate with stone flying. Just cool. She wields him like Arya carries Needle.

The only problem with Drogon being so effective in King's Landing is that it makes you wonder why the other two dragons were ineffective during other battles and seemed easy to kill. One day the Iron Fleet is successful in a ridiculously transparent ambush and kills a dragon easily; the next battle and the Iron Fleet is easily beaten and with one less dragon. None of it makes any sense. 

[S08.E05: The Bells]

3 minutes ago, Bryce Lynch said:

There are probably scattered atrocities in most wars.  But, I think it is rare for innocent people to be deliberately targeted, especially at the scale that Dany did it.  

Non-combatants have always had the highest casualty figures during war. Always. Especially if you are unlucky enough that the war is held in your ground. The estimates for dead during WWII range from sixty to a hundred million depending on the source and historian. The vast majority of these deaths are civilian. Now you can quibble that dying of starvation during say the Siege of Leningrad isn't directly a death by combat, but it is a death by war and because of military decisions taken at the top. War always has and always will kill more civilians than anyone else. One of the few things I liked about the Bells is that we did get some sense of just how awful it is, but the reasons for showing the horror are all in narrative service to justifying war. 

[S08.E05: The Bells]

1 hour ago, Bryce Lynch said:

I don't think anyone is comparing Cersei to the Jews or Europe.   I think the innocent people that Dany slaughtered, after the battle was over, for no good reason, would be be more like the Jews or the people of Europe. 

But, Hitler systematically rounded up, enslaved, tortured and slaughtered millions over several years, so the comparison doesn't really hold up.

Still, what Dany did was a horrific war crime and crime against humanity.  If she had killed the same number of innocent people, as collateral damage, during the battle, she might be able to justify it.  But, they were slaughtered after the battle was over.

Cersei committed a horrible war crime by using her people was human shields.  But, ultimately Dany came up with an attack plan (somehow 10,000 times smarter than the one from a week earlier) that allowed her to defeat Cersei and take the city, with very little harm to those human shields.

That is what made her suddenly deciding to slaughter all the innocents, after the battle was won, all the more horrific and out of character.    

Aren't all wars ultimately filled with war crimes and the literal slaughter of innocents? And isn't this fact something our art should be examining rather than the easy projection of evil into the enemy/other so that we can watch heroes fighting "evil"? The awful truth that none of us wants to face is that most of the evil comes from us. Yeah, I don't quite know what to do with this either but the fact that these writers haven't bothered to wrestle with the contradictions of human character really bothers me. For all of Martin's faults, I think he at least tried.