Flynn

I enjoyed it. It was a nice hour of TV or whatever the runtime is. Production values remain high, acting has slightly improved in a lot of cases and I appreciate that they're trying to get to the end of the story.

I'm not following this argument. It took GRRM five years to push out Dance, which was supposed to just be the other half of A Feast for Crows. It took a long time because of Martin's process, but it wasn't impossible and it moved stories forward in a satisfying and organic fashion.

Almost literally the message that GRRM was trying to send.

There was no meeting.

The off-camera foibles of a reality-TV star family are now somehow not entertainment news?

The scale is tricky and made trickier by the fact that the showrunners have given up on trying to figure out things like geography and feudal politics. Westeros is the size of either South America or North and South America (I can't remember, but either way, it's huge), so Blackwater Bay is much bigger than it looks…

The Starks also have some nutjobs in their past. All the Great Houses have had their crazies.

Old enough to be her father and at least complicit in (actually responsible for) the murder of her parents. Every girl's dream.

Being moderately intelligent and convinced that she's a genius is like one of Cersei's defining character traits.

Possible but unlikely. The relation of the Three Eyed Crow and Children of the Forest to the White Walkers is ambiguous in the books, but there's reason to think they're not on the same side. If you think of the story in Manichean terms—as many of the characters and value systems kind of do—then the CoF should be…

Regular ass wildlings were able to get over the wall even though the Watch knew they were coming, and very nearly took Castle Black and the gate there. No one in the show (I think?) knows that the Wall will magically keep Walkers out. Night's King probably also has a horn that will soon make an appearance that will…

Okay bro

I don't think GRRM is going to tie everything up neatly unless he plans on writing a very unhappy ending. Which is a credible possibility with GRRM, but not (in my opinion) with D&D. I also am not at all sure that GRRM is going to finish the series. Six years and one week today since Dance was published and all…

Euron's fleet doesn't have a choice not to be in threat. If he gets near Dany, his fleet is fucked. Because dragons fly, and ships just sail. Surprise doesn't have much to do with whether the only airforce in the world beats a bunch of galleons or longships or whatever Euron's overnight navy is supposed to be.

You do not abandon one of the major castles of the realm. These things are like the nuclear weapons of the era. They're nation-makingly important martial assets. They're also enormously valuable feudal properties, and can be used to straight up buy major military, economic and political support.

That scene where he says "build me a thousand ships" made me scoff out loud. A thousand ships? Really? The combined navies in the second Persian War numbered only about 1,600, and that was triremes.

It's actually bizarre that Dragonstone was deserted. There's no explanation for that that makes sense.

Dany literally already burned a navy with her dragons last season. Season 6, episode 9. What is different about Euron's navy that makes it less flammable? Plot armor? The need to stretch out the conflict? The Crow's Eye who they didn't even bother to give an eyepatch is a speedbump, the same way Prince…

Right, but that's the whole premise of the show, the juxtaposition of the intricate wrangling down south with the existential menace encroaching from the north. That's the whole ball game: making that work. My view is that they're not really making it work, because the realm probably isn't supposed to pull together.…