I agree with you. It’s definitely not Hubris on Cooper’s part. It’s all part of the Fireman’s plan - 430, Richard and Laura, two birds with one stone, and all that.

When he finally wakes up in the hospital and is back to being 100% Cooper, he is completely normal up through the end of part 17. He’s kind, chipper, and confident.

If that’s your criteria for ‘complexity,’ then the ASOIAF books are some of the simplest around. There’s an absurd amount of repetition. Have you ever gone back and read a bunch of one character’s POV chapters in a row? GRRM obviously writes them knowing that it will have been a while since we last read that…

I’d love to hear your evidence for this, because I still think it’s one of the most complex shows on television.

Oh, shoot. Well, just pretend I’m asking the legions of book fans crying “fan service” instead of you.

People keep saying that D&D can’t do interesting character work, and I couldn’t disagree more. There’s been lost of interesting character moments in the last couple of seasons. Saying they can’t do dialogue or character work is code for, “This arc/conversation didn’t happen in the book - therefore, I’m not able to…

What does that mean, exactly? No one sets out to write a story that ends with fan service. But when you have this many people speculating about what will happen in both the books and the show, at a certain point, *something* is always going to be fan service.

Of all of the problems to wave away by saying “magic,” this is obviously one of them. The Night King is basically a wizard.

100% agreed. What good is years of character development without all of this payoff? The incredible battles and visual effects sequences we’ve gotten this year are more than enough to make up for the fact that some head-scratching moments.

Right. LF makes a very blatant reference to the fact that Brienne would supposedly be duty-bound to kill Arya if she was a threat to Sansa. Then Sansa sends Brienne away at literally the first opportunity.

The bass-line in the beginning of ‘Waste’ is almost exactly like ‘Zombie’. Combined with the acoustic guitar, it’s uncanny.

I can see you. I don’t think you’re stuck in the greys. Unless I am too...

I was truly confused by that weird vocal moment in ‘Same Logic/Teeth’ - I assume that’s what the review is referring to as the borderline-parody Modest Mouse impression.

Daisy was exactly the direction I wanted them to go - more noisy, more weird, more experimental. But given where they started, it’s not surprising that some of their fans weren’t pleased.

Why did I never realize that Big Ed is Stilgar? Wow.

Did anyone else notice that someone appears behind the van during that scene? You can briefly see a head appear in the back-right window of the van.

Why were you reading the novelization for Clueless?

Well.. a lot of fantasy stories might still be human stories, but not at the same level. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that Game of Thrones is higher quality than a lot of other fantasy.

The point of the quote is that they're well-written human stories. Certainly, every fantasy story is literally a human story in a fantasy world.

Exactly. I'm reading the Malazan books right now and dragons figure into the story in a fairly large way. I admit that sometimes I roll my eyes at how they're supposed to be so scary and majestic and all that.