At some point Jon better start wondering why he goes for the crazy and/or murderous women.....
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Now that's a sentence I have never seen constructed before.
And you're worried about watching TV?! On a fucking cruise?!
What, you go on 10 of them a year, dragged kicking and screaming? lol
Grey Worm wanted to kill every last one of them. Nothing that I can remember ever said he was a good person. He obeyed commands and loved a girl. When he saw his Queen go a murdering he joined in, perfectly acceptable to me.
also, Jaime getting stabbed twice in the torso by a foot long dagger at the caves yet is able to walk all the way to the Red Keep, get cersai, then walk down the stairs under the red keep.
all the while bleeding.
My biggest annoyance is at Jon, but he's been a tart for a while, so it's not really out of character. It's who he is. Choosing not to play the game is deciding to lose. That's why Sansa's always frustrated with him.
Wrt Dany
...
So many people want her to be some feminist heroine, or virtuous ruler.. something something.. Putting all these metoo era values on her.
Really, she's been entirely vengeful, murderous and cruel as any at different points. Yes, she's freed slaves and some oppressed peoples, but at huge cost. It's not entirely a given this wasn't just it's own power play rather than genuine altruism.
At the end, she gets her fierce foreign army, barbarian cavalry and unmatched air power to come and invade her old homeland.
After a series of distractions, lost opportunities, betrayals and harrowing losses, she ends up outside the gates of the Red Keep for the final battle.
Ok, so is her turn to apocalypse really that surprising?.
The theme of season 8 is her as an increasingly embittered, isolated commander of a foreign military in a foreign land where the native people don't see her as one of them and regard her suspiciously.
All her closest advisors and friends are dead. Many have betrayed her, either through passive naivete (Jon, Tyrion) or intentional plotting (Varys plot string; maybe Sansa, Tyrion if she finds out.)
Well here’s an interesting take on the battle by a military strategist.
https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/battle-winterfell-military-analysis-tactics.html
Cavalry
Team Alive’s use of cavalry has received harsh criticism from analysts, in part because of the near-complete annihilation of the force within minutes of the beginning of the battle. Team Alive deserves some of this criticism, but the cavalry attack is best thought of as a low-odds gamble in a difficult situation than as an error in judgment.
And you're worried about watching TV?! On a fucking cruise?!
What, you go on 10 of them a year, dragged kicking and screaming? lol
I'm okay with the how the Scorpions vs Dragon battle turned out.
Episode 4 was a lucky shot out on a target flying on a predictable fixed path.
Episode 5 was more realistic.
She attacked form the sun giving her the element of surprise. That's proper aerial tactics.
She's facing a force who are using a slow moving, difficult to aim weapon they have never trained to use against a moving aerial target.
The Scorpions used in this season are larger than the original one used by Bron. They require a crew to aim and and suck against a fast moving maneuverable target.
Even with the larger numbers of Scorpions it is more realistic that they ended up missing every shot.
They would have been better off with the smaller version used by Bron but even then they would likely have ended up not hitting anything but air
The Honest Abe shit was stupid and not believable. Fuck, Ned kept a secret. Jon already has strong motives to not tell anyone. He didn't want it, and he has expressed a lot of frustration with Sansa too. Sansa also doesn't have reason to think she's a bitch for all that Dany had done to that point.
She has come across as level-headed many times. She makes attempts to go with decisions that outweigh the costs.
Yes. She had won the war at that point with great efficiency. It was baffling to see her not go directly to the Red Keep and leave it at that if she wanted to make it personal.
Tyrion ratting out Varys after Sansa told him was inane (and like he cared about treason when he does it shortly after...). There was no point as Dany already knew Jon betrayed her. I also find it dumb that Varys is already convinced she's rotten before even seeing her try to rule, while knowing that the alternative, Jon, doesn't even want it.
Season 8 is absolute shit!
i predict jon will kill Dany, and Greyworm because he has to get thru him to get to her.Man, if 75% of the leaked spoilers are true (which quite confident they will be) there will be blood.
i predict jon will kill Dany, and Greyworm because he has to get thru him to get to her.
then he executes Sansa.
then sit on the Iron Throne as the reluctant king.
the interesting thing is what happens to Tyrion. does Bron get his castle or not?
The Golden Company didn’t bring the elephants with them so they are happily playing in the water back in Essos instead of being barbecued by Drogon.
I read it differently, but it's all subjective given the break neck pace and lack of the novels to flesh out the internal narrative.
I agree tho she's won the war, but was left in a position as illegitimate due to Jon's big dumb mouth.
What Varys saw in Jon... IDK. The little scene with the birdie from the kitchen suggested he was perhaps even trying to have Dany poisoned or something. Awfully aggressive and offensive for a master of whispers and shadow skullduggery.
I'm still putting my money on Sansa ending up on top and Jon and Dany dead (along with a bunch of the crew in KL.)
i predict jon will kill Dany, and Greyworm because he has to get thru him to get to her.
then he executes Sansa.
then sit on the Iron Throne as the reluctant king with the dragon as his enforcer.
the interesting thing is what happens to Tyrion. does Bron get his castle or not?
I'm picturing a scene where Dany tries to use her dragon to burn Jon for not giving her the D but it turns out he's fireproof like she is, at which point the tables turn.i predict jon will kill Dany, and Greyworm because he has to get thru him to get to her.
then he executes Sansa.
then sit on the Iron Throne as the reluctant king with the dragon as his enforcer.
the interesting thing is what happens to Tyrion for betraying Dany.
ie: does Bron get his castle or not?
if yes, then Jon kills dany b4 she executes tyrion.
if no, then RIP tyrion
it analyzes the cavalry charge with fire weapons.Well here’s an interesting take on the battle by a military strategist.
https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/battle-winterfell-military-analysis-tactics.html
Cavalry
Team Alive’s use of cavalry has received harsh criticism from analysts, in part because of the near-complete annihilation of the force within minutes of the beginning of the battle. Team Alive deserves some of this criticism, but the cavalry attack is best thought of as a low-odds gamble in a difficult situation than as an error in judgment.
The success of a cavalry attack against infantry requires either flanking (hitting a formation on its side while some other group “fixes” its front) or a shocking frontal assault that disrupts the formation. Both of these depend more on psychological than on physical factors. Fear of being attacked from two sides induces infantry to break and flee, just as fear of being overrun causes infantry to throw down their weapons and run. In either case, cavalry runs free and kills until the infantry can pull itself back together. But crucially, success depends on the ability of the cavalry to induce panic.
We also know from ancient and medieval sources that commanders struggled to keep even experienced cavalry under control. Once cavalry left sight range and hearing distance of a commander, it was effectively on its own and not manageable. Cavalry formations commonly abandoned the battlefield to pursue objectives distinct from those of their commanding officers. Even as recently at the Battle of Gettysburg, Gen. Robert E. Lee lost contact with his cavalry, leaving him blind in the fight against the Army of the Potomac.
Team Alive knew enough about Team Dead to guess that the Dothraki faced a kind of infantry that they had never encountered before; one without fear and thus invulnerable to shock and flanking. Moreover, in the dark, the Dothraki probably could not even identify the enemy flank. Although it’s not clear that Team Alive had a well-thought out plan for the cavalry charge, it may have believed that it could take advantage of the lack of discipline of Team Dead (which did not fight in tight phalanxes or with standardized weapons) in order to reach and attack the “middle management” of White Walkers. Alexander the Great employed a variant of this strategy at the Battle of Gaugamela.
While all of this makes theoretical sense, it also runs counter to decades of Dothraki fighting experience. When Dothraki fought undisciplined infantry, that infantry broke and ran. When Dothraki fought disciplined infantry (the Unsullied, for example), the infantry took casualties but could retreat and maintain integrity and mobility. At the Battle of Winterfell, Team Dead’s infantry simply absorbed the greater part of the Dothraki cavalry without breaking and running. This left the cavalry immobile and largely defenseless against attacks from every side. The Dothraki likely did not envision their attack as a suicide charge, but they had limited tools with which to judge the effectiveness of Team Dead.
None of this makes the cavalry charge a good idea. But the mistake was made in the days before the Battle of Winterfell, not in the minutes before the charge. The best employment of the Dothraki would have come as long range scouts and skirmishers in the days before the battle. Even then, however, their utility was limited; cavalry often succeeds by disrupting supply lines and ambushing foraging parties, and Team Dead needed neither of these. And in any case, unless Team Alive spared a dragon for air support, any accumulation of Dothraki would have been vulnerable to Viserion. If the Dothraki had not charged, they would have found themselves pinned against the infantry, their mobility lost. If they had moved right or left in search of Team Dead’s flanks, they would have run the risk of being flanked themselves (Team Dead also had cavalry, and its infantry was fast and fearless) or destroyed by Viserion and the Night King.
At any rate it’s an interesting read on battle.
(Also Arya falls under Team Alive - Special Forces )