aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, omgOriginally Posted by Loony BoB
You're on, Greyjoy.
Are you Stark?
Sand or Clegane?
Sam (is) well.
My Cellar, Baratheon.
Happy to help. It actually took me a while to catch on, too.
Well, Dany's kinda screwed, isn't she? It seems like she's barely arrived in Westeros and she's lost most of the Iron Fleet, House Tyrell and House Greyjoy allies, and her Unsullied - or what's left of them - is holed up in Casterly Rock.
Welp.
Regarding the eternal debate about Dany, I'm of two minds. I don't think she's as badly acted as is made out, more that sometimes she is 'overacted', particularly with the cold steel she exudes. It's gotten worse actually this season, and in this episode. Sort of like.. cold smug hubris? I think that's deliberate. I think we're meant to think "hey, let's not automatically root for Dany".
I still think Dany is 'better' for the kingdoms than Cersei, but she is not this unblemished saviour figure. She seemed really stubborn with that scene with Jon, though perhaps understandable.
Bran is creepy. It's like he's forgotten emotion. Sansa's joy to see her brother return quickly diminished.
That final Olenna scene was great. Sad to see that character go, but it was a great, last, final bitter sendoff. Jaime's facial expressions during that reveal was subtle yet telling.
Ultimately though, I think Cersei's victories are building us up for a fall. She's had a string of success, a string that's probably going to continue, if those dragon ballistae is anything to go by. Still, the pendulum will swing the other way at some point. A great episode, all in all.
Glad Olenna got to get in a final zinger. It's a shame she's gone, she's been one of my favourite characters.
He's got all of space and time at his fingertips. If he was normal there'd he something wrong.
Also, Emilia Clarke isn't a bad actress. At her worst not even half as bad as some pretend. There I said it.
And Cersei is lucky she has stumbled into allies that aren't dumb. She's the most pompous and entitled person on the show as well as the most shortsighted. If she didn't have her not a maester, jaimie, and euron she'd have seen the executioners axe by now. Great character and I love Lina Headey, but she's still an impulsive psycho who isn't half as smart as she thinks she is.
Emilia Clarke in interviews and stuff seems to be a really expressive, likeable and emphatic person. But when she becomes Daenerys she seems to lose any and all emotion, with only occasional bouts of indignance breaking up the endless indifference. I think she's a good actress receiving poor direction.
Take the Tyrion quoting his own wisdom moment. That was a nicely written bit to show Dany has a sense of humour and isn't in permanent srs bsns mode. She delivered those lines flatly, like she found Tyrion boring.
On Bran's lack of emotion:
He didn't seem to have a problem connecting with Meera and Hodor, but I may be thinking of scenes he had with them before his "transformation was complete".“It’s like imagining you have all of space and time in your head,” Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who plays Bran, told Entertainment Weekly. “Bran is existing in thousands of planes of existence at any one time. So it’s quite difficult for Bran to have any kind of semblance of personality anymore because he’s really like a giant computer.”
Emilia Clarke is very charming and expressive outside of Game of Thrones. But I'm not "pretending" when I say she's terrible. She was terrible in her Broadway play (which closed after a week because she was terrible in it) and passably okay in Me Before You. So maybe it's bad direction, yet, every other actor on the show is incredibly skilled and gives good performances, so I'm not buying that.
You may not be seeing what I'm seeing, but that doesn't mean that I'm being hyperbolic when I say literally every scene she is in is physically cringe for me.
Once he started watching all of time and space he didn't really interact with them much. Hell, most of last season he was interacting with the three eyed raven or time travelling with him and didn't have much to say to anyone else. And the season before he wasn't even on. And even on the trip down from the wall he was time travelling for lots of it.
Let's also keep in mind that the three eyed raven said he didn't have time to teach him all he needed to know. Maybe he would have helped teach him to not get as lost in it all.
Edit: Maybe that is how it is for you. I don't feel the same. Glad we sorted that out.
Master of the Fork
Cid's Knight
It's also her character to be more authoritative and serious and boasting when she meets people as she wants to be seen as a strong leader so that's how she thinks she should act. She acts different in off scenes with the people she trusts. She learned that she couldn't be so friendly with that mess up in Qarth and how she was too trusting and Drogo got murdered.
It's developed characterization.
It's probably the case of a bad actress receiving bad direction. She does seem like a nice person irl but that doesn't make her good at her job. Her lack of emotion and continued reliance on her name as a justification for anything causes me to not care so much about what happens to her.
Cersei is evil to the core, and she definitely relies on her name as well, but only as a means to an end. She wants to rule everything because she's smurfing Queen Cersei, not because she's a Lannister. She'll also marry into other houses and betray anyone she needs to get ahead, regardless of what that does to the family name. I want Cersei to lose so badly but what she does makes sense in her own twisted mind.
Dany on the other hand... Why the hell would she expect John Snow (not even a Stark) to bend the knee as part of some pledge 1000 years ago, that was undone by the Mad King and Robert, when she herself has broken tradition by freeing slaves, taking the Dothraki across the sea, etc. Seriously, you come over with dragons and expect all the non-Lannisters to just agree to do it your way? Not even Cersei would be that dumb.
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Dany was trying to project strength in her first meeting with a person who she didn't know who could be a strong ally or enemy and who was also pretty much an unknown politically seeing as he wasn't involved in anything in the South until he retook winterfell. Being surprised that a queen tries to act like she's the one in control in negotiations seems silly to me.
Some people actually cite those as reasons they don't like her. When people explain why they like Dany (after season 1), it's because the people around her are awesome.
I found this really interesting video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhryDa6BKzU
3:20 to 7:06, if you have three and a half minutes, check this section out. I think he does a good job explaining why people dislike Dany. Even if you disagree, you get to see where people are coming from.
To sum it up. She relies heavily on her name, her +50 heat resistance, and the supporting cast (people and CGI) that do everything for her.
My big counterargument to the video would be that in RPG terms, Dany is like a mage, and Jon is like a warrior. So it makes sense for Jon to lead from the front while Dany leads from behind.
I'm totally open to the points in the video being wrong, so if you want to school my dislike of Dany by pouring liquid gold over my head or whatever, go for it.
Jon and Dany had no chemistry in those scenes at all. They were almost cringeworthy with how awkward they were.
Everything else was pretty awesomeI don't have any complaints about Bran. He just needs some time to adjust. The old 3-eyed raven wasn't all cold and robotic, and if Bran lives througgh all this he'll grow out of it.
...
The thing with that is that she has tried the "Do as I say, I am a Targaryen, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons..." speech half a dozen times and it has never, ever worked. Instead, she has inspired loyalty either through her humanity or, in both cases of Dothraki, her supernatural powers.
If she'd approached her meeting with Jon like a leader instead of an entitled ruler, explained how she got there and what her plans for peace were then he probably would've responded better, just like everyone else she has encountered. But then I guess they wrote it like this to create some dramatic tension.
In mitigation it's also worth noting that Dany as a character is at a disadvantage because the audience knows Jon is right about the White Walkers and that by Dany's own "I am a Targaryen therefore the Iron Throne is mine" logic Jon has a better claim.
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