HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

not a huge thing, but a single shot of Ellaria Sand would have gone a long way.

Appreciated the total lack of Danerys-on-dragon shots.

yah, that really stood out to me

pretty sure we were bombing cities while the Russians were already in Germany and the war was more or less over,

The Sack of King's Landing II is more like the Emperor surrendering and then we drop a couple of atomic bombs on Tokyo proper for good measure (which we... did not do).

xp we’re not really meant to empathize with her here, and Grey Worm’s face as he’s doing the “fuck it, kill em all” spear throw tells all

re Dresden: it was really just a question of how long the Germans would hold out ... like, a month or maybe 8 or 9, at most, but they were pretty much guaranteed losers at that point. The Japan comparison is bogus, because Cersei hadn't surrendered ... one squadron of kings army soldiers threw down their swords ... like, nahh.

did we see a second squadron? there’s like one main entrance and they were the leaders of the charge

the bells were ringing, swords are down, and cersei could have tried to hold shit in the keep but the one shot we get is Danerys pondering for a second with flared nostrils deciding the peaceful option is bullshit. burns down civilians almost immediately after!

like, we're talking about less geographical territory, but this is more like, Nazi regiments surrendering in France and Belgium, so we move on to the center of Nazi power such that Germany = Kings Landing

er, the central part of Kings Landing -- past those gates, would be Germany --

Like, I'm not saying that makes her a great person, but it's a totally rational tactical deployment as far as military strategy goes -- just think how nice the Germans and Japanese were to the U.S./Allies a generation or so after we bombed the fuck out of them.

would've been so much more satisfying if they'd made it to the boat and he just bleeds to death far into the ocean and leave them both fucked.

"it was really just a question of how long the Germans would hold out ... like, a month or maybe 8 or 9, at most" - given that they held out longer than one month and that 8 or 9 was a greater period of time than D-Day to Dresden.

The city's surrender bells had tolled and there was no fighting when Danaerys unleashed the sack. What she did was the Rape of Nanking, medieval fantasy-style.

Like, I'm not saying that makes her a great person, but it's a totally rational tactical deployment as far as military strategy goes

re: distrust of Russia, the analogy there would be if Dany started contemplating an alliance with Cersei against Jon

despite air superiority, modern day warfare seems a poor comparison

all i'm saying is that it isn't crazy as far as military strategy goes -- ruthless, yes, violating the geneva conventions or whatever, sure, but not crazy

who rang the bell?

I was mostly satisfied with the episode. The horror of war/slaughter had a much greater impact then any of the fighting vs the night king army. And glad there were a lot of plans that immediately went to shit. The Euron fight was a pretty stupid way to get rid of him, that could've been better.

maybe the bombing of Nagasaki would be a better analogy ... idk.

xp - dan otm -- it was totally unclear whether that bell ringing meant anyone was actually surrendering

Tyrion did a whole speech about listening for the bells like 15 minutes before that

it meant they were surrendering because the script tells us half a dozen times that that’s what it means. it’s clear. xp

Arya murking Dany is basically the only satisfying conclusion to this.

anybody wondering about dresden should check out this video for a primer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS2_YFbzAVs

i found this episode pretty satisfying

― sarahell, Sunday, May 12, 2019 8:54 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed, i mean even though i liked the battle of Winterfell episode this one was a lot better and the character stuff was much more interesting by far. i do like the relative audacity of this heel turn for Daenerys even though it was telegraphed as being kinda built into her DNA from the beginning of the show.

Glad Euron got skewered but I was kinda bummed that it was at the expense of Jaime :(

Arya “can I get a ride on a white horse” moment was cool i guess

but again these moments in this wildly truncated season where a character just completely undoes seasons of development kinda fristrating
ie Arya the girl with no name stone cold icezombie killer i will kill cersei i go to kings landing for revenge revenge revenge -
“hey dont come up here or you’ll die”
*cryface* “...’k”

dragon going ham on kings landing WAS pretty awesome to watch tho

Maybe I’m projecting or giving the show too much credit but I think Sandor saying “don’t turn out like me” was what changed her mind.

This special 9/11 episode was dandy but I didn’t understand why Arya turned into the Horse Whisperer at the end

highest moments of disrepute, list them here:
1) all arya needed was a good talking to, no longer needs to kill cersei
2) euron and jaimie's "of all the sandbars in all the beaches in all the world, you had to wash up on this one" schtick
3) cleganebowl being generally ruined by poor pacing, shitty editing and ARRRRRRRGH WE DIE TOGETHER FOR SOME REASON
4) speaking of which, wtf with euron and jaimie's fight sequence editing? did they not get the footage or something?
5) jon's "oh shit, maybe burning down the city with us in it is a BAD idea" moment
6) discarding varys, the character whose speechifying and acting has made him among the most interesting in the surviving cast, without giving him a moment to talk
7) oh NOW the crossbows don't work right
feel free to take over for me here

Barry was fantastic tonight.

Much as Barry's oddball bottle episode featured a more compelling fight than the zombie battle, of the two shows that showed the passing of the evil queen, Veep's was far better. Watch it if you haven't already; I'm not spoiling anything here!

Arya murking Dany is basically the only satisfying conclusion to this.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z)

seems like a fait accompli at this point; theories on how they get rid of white worm and the dragon?

"RING THE BELL" reminded me of Hit X to Shaun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAhG9D9UO7c

Jon watching a CGI dragon destroy an entire city in detail while being told it wasn’t in the budget for him to pet Ghost #GameofThrones pic.twitter.com/jDuNVMTYvT

— Sabrina (@doshiiis) May 13, 2019

I know what it meant to ring the bell but the whole point of the plot was that Jamie would ring the bell to convince Dany that Cersei surrendered even though she didn't, but he never got to the bell (or to her in time). I didn't think just anybody could/would do it.

I'm glad arya didn't kill cersei and it was just a bunch of rocks (we presume). That kind of anti-fan service was needed.

Don't think the Valonqar prophecy was ever mentioned in the show but was noticeable that Jaimie had his hand on her neck at the end

It was. There was a flashback with Maggie.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DFcXXP7NSV8

Arya kidnapped a woman and her child (they were soon murdered by Daenerys)

Jon and Davos waiting until King’s Landing has been burned down to consider a retreat

No. There was nothing about the Valonqar in that flashback. They deliberately left it out.

Dany's decision to firebomb is being talked about as an unearned descent into madness, when it was pretty clearly framed as political act as well. When she realized what Varys was doing she knew that her reign would just be a bunch of plots and conspiracies unless she made the people too afraid to resist.

Yara not showing up for the battle means she's going to save Jon next episode I guess

Not expecting Yara at all tbh

Yeah I suppose there could be an exception, but this season has been very "what you see is what you get"

Weird to see the magical horse from Michael Clayton explicitly referenced by game of thrones of all tv shows but ok.

Are the people of King's landing supposed to be Daenerys's main subjects if she takes the iron throne. & from her family having ruled them for 300 years or is that supposed to be made moot by Robert's Rebellion. JUst wondering about the ethical bit outside of the immediate. Cos she doesn't seem to be much of a just ruler if so. Which might just undermine her message up tilo now.

Was just thinking also that if people actually were still pro slavery they might have been a lot less brutal cos the people that were being killed would be goods they'd want to keep in some kind of working order.
Can't see the benefits of out and out genocide over slavery. & i thought that a lot of the people we were seeing being killed were below the majorly slave owning class anyway.

Was thinking that it was just as well there weren't things like Geneva conventions to be broken cos a few people I didn't want to think of as war criminals probably would have been seen that way. But i guess military ethics were a lot more brutal in the medieval age I take it this is supposed to be.

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a dragon

i thought that was a pretty great episode if you pretend it was preceded by a bunch of totally different episodes than the ones that actually preceded it

— Max Read (@max_read) May 13, 2019

I agree with Max, but I also think you have to pretend a different first 30 minutes of the episode preceded the final 50

I thought it was a good episode, easily the best of this season so far. There were still a number of WTF beats and rushed choices, but I thought it was really good.

The hyperbole I saw online last night from people that don't like when fiction deviates from their preferred choices in storylines was absurd. It's not worth trying to hunt down the specific tweets this morning, but my three favorite ones were:

"GRRM should be put on suicide watch for HBO destroying his life's work"
"They [the showrunners] need to apologize to Emilia Clarke"
all the variations of "I HAVE BEEN BETRAYED"

C'mon.

I loved this episode, I love this denouement

I wish I'd watched it in a roomful of the sort of fans who've spent the past few years posting about DRAGONS on their Facebook pages, she has DRAGONS and DRAGONS are cool it's the DRAGONS show

Generally I thought this "twist" was exactly in keeping with this show's general attitude toward power and machinations. I like that it completely revises the entire goodness? effectiveness? of Varys's attempts to protect everyone since day one

Dany burning down King's Landing would have been a great plot point, if it had been done pretty much any other way than the way they did it. The show has been so much about tough choices and how it some times takes a bit of doing bad to achieve good things. But Dany manages to end the war on one dragon in, like, five minutes, and then... she just burns down the town anyway?

lol in 2013 GRRM replied "This guy gets it" to some guy's tweet about Dany beginning to prefer fire and death to peace.

I heard one of the GoT podcasts this morning and they were saying this was the worst episode of the series