Because capitalism is destroying the planet, not me eating cheese or having the occasional burger.

I haven't been on holiday for 5 years, because I can't afford to. No way am I punishing myself further by going vegan when the guy next door to me flies 18,000 miles to Australia and back for his holidays, releasing more carbon in 2 weeks than I have in the last year.

Unless the whole system changes we are all fucked, so until that happens I am going to enjoy the small pleasures my menial little life has to offer.

I prefer the alternative of none of this bullshit and then having a wank if I feel like one.

At least this car crash has a chance of motivating George RR Martin to actually finish the books and give his story an ending it deserves.

Loved the direction, especially Arya's POV: 9/11 visuals were strong. Also unlike most people I like the magic horse. I've heard a lot of anecdotes of seemingly weird/ethereal shit like this appearing in the midst of actual combat, so I don't share the same complaints I've seen in that regard. I also really liked the symbolism in that it looked just like Dany's silver horse she received as a wedding gift, but was now covered in blood.

I also thought Cleganebowl was good, particularly the pre-game interaction between Arya and Sandor.

All in all I loved the visuals, direction, and performances all-round.

The writing, however, was trash. They massacred Jaime's arc, FUCK SHOW EURON, Dany's descent into madness was completely unbelievable because it simply hasn't had enough time to develop, Jon is now just a fucking damp squib, Tyrion is a bitch, and Varys is apparently a retard who has his own spies come and knock on his door and meet him in his own chambers? Also FUCK SHOW EURON.

Overall if I had to be objective I'd give it a 7/10. 9 for visuals, 9 for direction, 10 for performances (particularly Maisie), 10 for music, but I'm legit subtracting points for the writing.

In context though, it wasn't 7/10. In the context of this being the culmination of the story arcs of so many brilliant characters over so many seasons, it was legit hot fucking trash 0/10 REEEEEEEEEEE.

Showing my age here a bit, but Total Annihilation had one of the first full orchestral soundtracks, and to me it's still the best. I will wuite often mute other strategy games music and have the TA soundtrack on shuffle instead.

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

Credit where credit's due, the first few seasons were stunningly good, and what's more an almost perfect adaptation of the books (which, when I read them, seemed unadaptable).

But now I get the feeling the show has got so wildly successful that nobody has the ability (or sees the need) to just tell D&D "that sucks" or "that's a plot hole" or "that doesn't make sense". Couple that with the fact they no longer have the framework of brilliant source material on which to build their narrative, and we get these two dudes with a relatively basic understanding of the books ("Gendry Rivers?" really?) who are just sat there writing all this fanfic-level garbage sniffing their own farts about how great it is.

The writing would really, really benefit from some oversight rather than "these guys did a great job before, leave them to it" attitude that seems to have enabled this fuckfest.

B I G T A S T E Y

Returning for a second nerd essay on the military tactics as I'm a big war history nerd:

I think a lot of people are forgetting the sheer numbers of people involved when they criticise them for not just defending behind the walls. In the opening episodes we see a ton of people camped outside Winterfell and from the scraps of information we get the army at their disposal seems to be around 40,000. This is far more people than you need to defend Winterfell, they simply wouldnt fit on the walls and a lot of them would just die in the crush if you try to deploy them all in the yards.

With that in mind, a couple of things I've seen questioned actually make sense. Deploying your unsullied out in front of the gates is one. This is absolutely what I would do (although I would deploy another phalanx just inside the gates to defend it when breached). Not only are they defending the weak point that is the gate and gatehouse, but they are going to fight to their maximum potential in phalanx formation in open unbroken ground. Let the dead pile up infront of their shield wall and leave your archers and melee fighters defending the walls.

The charge of the Dothraki was also fine, tactically speaking. In a battle like that you need to keep formation, defend the gates and keep them away from the walls as long as you can to allow your archers on the walls to do as much potential damage as they can.
If you try to have mounted Dothraki participate in that fight all it will do is disrupt your formation. You would get panicked horses crashing into your own men, and gaps opening in your lines as the Dothraki move about, both of which are extremely no bueno.
With that in mind you really only have 3 ways to use the Dothraki: 1. tell them to dismount and defend the walls (which wastes their shock cavalry potential and probably pisses them off), 2. send them off away from the siege so they can fight numerous smaller engagements on the perimeter where they can bring their numbers to bear in detail, or 3. charge them at the opening of the battle and hope to inflict as many casualties as possible in a blaze of glory. I would probably have gone for option 2 but they went for option 3 which is fine. Yes they all died but they probably killed 5 wights for every dead Dothraki.

As for the stuff that genuinely was dumb:

Yes fighting in front of the trench was retarded. Maybe they were planning on digging 2 trenches, fighting behind the first and then falling back behind the 2nd, but ran out of time to dig? Even still, they should have just said "ok lads guess we fight behind just one trench."

The trebuchets should have been firing continuously until overran, not just once, and a couple of them should have been inside the castle lobbing stuff over the walls.

Also, no ballista? Seriously, the Night King is coming on an undead dragon and nobody thought to make a few dragonglass-tipped ballistae and point them upwards?

Not raining arrows on the wights as they stood there just behind the trench made zero sense. Not using burning oil/ tar etc to defend the walls was also dumb.

The walls should also have been reinforced by reserves. Scrap the guys on either flank of the unsullied phalanx, (one of those flanks was commanded by Brienne I think). If you curve the phalanx against the wall in a ( or [ formation then you dont need these loose formations of infantry on the wings. Have them inside the castle in the courtyard ready to rush to whichever stretch of wall is in danger of being overrun.

Overall I think strategy-wise this battle was OK. This wasn't exactly Julius Caesar levels of siege warfare but their approach wasn't as bad as as a lot of people seem to think. I give whoever was in charge of deployment (Jon? Jorah?) a B-. It was way, way better than the Battle of the Bastards which was just honestly a series of massive blunders one after the other.

This wasn't a deus ex machina. A deus ex machina is a character or plot device thrust out of nowhere that magically resolves an unresolvable storyline.

OK, yes, Arya "came from nowhere" in a very very *literal* sense in that she appeared from off-camera without anybody noticing. But this was nothing more than the directors choice: people out-of-shot going unnoticed is a very common technique used to excellent effect regularly (eg: The Good the Bad and the Ugly). It worked here because it saved the final reveal for the very last moments. If we'd had a 30-second sequence of Arya sneaking into the Godswood after her chat with Melisandre, and then chilling out for 15 minutes watching the Ironborn die and waiting for the Night King, and then a final sprint past white walkers to the Nights King, it would have been a lot less dramatic than the scene we got.

From a thematic, storytelling perspective, Arya Stark was not thrust out of nowhere. Not at all. She has been here from season 1, and she has spent the last 7 seasons becoming a killer. This is about as un-deus ex machina as it can get. A magic prophesy-dude being born amid salt and smoke with a flaming sword and having an omg epic duel WOULD have been deus ex machina. This wasn't. This was much, much better.

Infact, the whole Arya in Braavos arc that I complained about at the time actually makes sense now, if you make the assumption that the Faceless Men used their spooky magic and/or "solved" the cryptic prophecies and knew Arya was the warrior to defeat the Nights King all along. It explains why they spent all that time training her but just seemed totally cool with her not following orders and then bailing and remaining Arya Stark. It explains why Jacquen crossed paths with her in the first place (he wasn't on a secret mission and just stumbled across Arya, he was on a secret mission to recruit Arya). Maybe even Syrio was involved, kickstarting Arya's training as soon as they realised what was up ("What do we say to the God of death?").

So it's absolutely fine if you didn't particularly like this ending, but it was absolutely NOT deus ex machina.

I liked it though. All the backstory included, the build up, and it turns out he was just a magic dude with a grudge. He stopped to gloat, and it got him killed. Just like Oberyn.

If what you wanted was an "unbeatable baddie goes up against magic hero good vs evil epic final battle" y'all not been paying attention. There is no Sauron or Thanos in this series. Just people, with people's flaws. And the Nights King was just a person. A person cursed by powerful magic 10,000 years ago. A person with immense power. The power to control the weather, to noscope dragons, to raise the dead. But still just a person. A person who stopped to gloat, who in his pride at the moment of his revenge on humanity, stopped to eyefuck Bran for a few seconds, and it got him killed.

I think this is very Game of Thrones, very legal, and very cool.

Lovin this thread, sad music is crack to me.

Recommend anything by Nick Drake. So sad and so beautiful.

Tom Waits's blues stuff is also great. Tom Waits is great. Lunacide have your upfrag for posting.

Robert Johnson is as old as the hills, and my all-time favourite bluesman so check out his recordings.

And then there's Electro-Shock blues by Eels. Written after his dad died, his mum got terminal cancer, and his sister committed suicide. It's hands-down my favourite album and it's essentially a grieving process in song form, starting off super dark and then evolving until towards the end it has a poignant optimism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldcHHXV6kNc&list=PL9SVK7mIoUmcqqeJRBYbiWCVAQvcjZ6Rc

Exactly. Obviously physically attacking people is way, way, way worse than using slurs, everyone knows that. But they're both still "actual racism".

Like, just because there's people dumping toxic waste into our oceans doesn't mean you can't criticise the person dropping litter in the park.

Don't blame the wars we finance, the climate change we cause, or the brutal regimes we sell weapons to for this wave of migrants and refugees. Blame the migrants and refugees. Don't blame our political stooges cutting social programs to give ourselves tax cuts for your shitty life, blame the brown people "taking your jobs." Hate each other. Fear muslims, fear migrants, fear liberals, fear the gays, fear the socialists. It's the same old story. Your life is miserable because society does nothing for you and everything for us. Make sure you hate them, they're your enemy. Just whatever you do, don't turn that outrage against us.

Of course, when we scapegoat a minority long enough, eventually impressionable brainwashed young people do things like this. It's a shame. We'll express outrage and shock, send thoughts and prayers. But we know what we're doing and we will keep doing it. It keeps you angry at each other, and not at us.

Just to elaborate, a "fair trial" has never been part fo the books or show. There is no established legal system of "fair trials" in Westeros. . A (rigged) trial was afforded to Tyrion as a gesture due to his status, and as a way for Tywin to keep his hands clean from the perceived grievous sin of kinslaying.

Lords have the right to "pit and gallows" ie: can legally put anyone of lower feudal status within their lands to death, this has been established numerous times in the books, and was established in season one with Ned "passsing sentence" on a deserter. No trial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jquz24k-Y8&t=1m16s

wow what a fair trial.

The inspiring thing about this is that anyone reading will realise that their life has just hit rock bottom, and things can only go uphill from there.