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The Serpent Queen Narration

If done right, the first-person-narration addressing the camera in The Serpent Queen could be really effective. 

Imagine, after several episodes of quipping and dark humor, the night of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre arrives, and Catherine finally addresses the camera and the audience without her usual smirk. As we watch thousands of people dying on essentially her orders, she quietly says: “I was protecting my family. What would YOU have done differently?” 

When it turns out that spending 8 seasons sitting in a chair was just foreshadowing for a lifetime of sitting in another chair.

How would you even go about using that thing properly? It doesn’t look very practical. 

Of course Henry had one. Would you expect anything less at this point?

Henry VIII’s bizarre mace pistol,

A very bizarre weapon, this is a mace with three pistol barrels located in the mace head.  A matchlock firearm, it was discharged by touching a burning slow match to a touch hole.  Most interestingly one was owned by Henry VIII King of England, who would carry it while walking the streets of London at night.  He did this to check that his constables were doing their duty.  One night they were, and he was arrested and jailed for suspicious activities, as he was carrying a huge mace gun on him at the time.  When his identity was revealed, the constables feared they would be executed, after all Henry was known for having people executed.  However they were rewarded with a stipend of 23 pounds for their vigilance.

Henry VIII’s mace is currently a part of the Royal Armouries Collection

For all that tumblr complains about the writing for female characters on this show, at least these female characters actively do something and D&D write for them

Jon Snow: His entire arc was invalidated in one episode, his parentage was there for the sole purpose of turning Dany paranoid considering Jon himself was not allowed to deal with the ramifications of it. Jon himself has no reactions to things happening around him and makes idiotic decisions to drive the plot. His entire season 1-7 arc invalidated.

Bran: Has done nothing of consequence and there was no point in watching his early season journey and him becoming the 3ER. Utterly useless character on the show.

Jaime: No redemption arc, nothing. He died as Cersei’s lackey. No meaning to his arc with Brienne

Tyrion: If he had fallen off the boat and drowned in season 5, it would have been the best thing to happen to Dany considering what a moron the show has turned him into. All he does is stand there and look sad about Dany.

Folks complaining about the female characters. At least the female characters have agency and actively drive the plot.

Dany decides this is it and takes KL with fire and blood.

Sansa actively schemes against Dany and sets this plot in motion with Varys.

Arya kills the NK and and is the hero of the long night.

Cersei holds her ground and KL till the very end.

The men on the other hand are useless lackeys. There is no development there, they actively regressed and became more dumb to prop up the female characters, they had no story other than to serve as plot devices. So if you are complaining about bad writing, at the least acknowledge that the bad writing affected all characters, not selectively one gender.   

Dorothea runs into her marriage like it’s an exciting college internship...and then wonders why it isn’t working out. 

Salon: Watching PBS's "Les Misérables" as Notre Dame burned: A lesson in processing spectacular loss

The new version of Victor Hugo’s tale has no familiar tunes to sweeten its tragedy. That feels very fitting now

By way of processing the shock of watching Notre Dame burn in Paris on Monday, I turned away from social media, where livestreams of the spreading flames were sadly plentiful, and turned on the latest adaptation of “Les Misérables,” currently airing on PBS’s “Masterpiece.”

This was mainly out of obligation, to be honest. The six-part series aired its first episode Sunday, the same night as the debut of a certain show starring zombies, dragons and queens. It is currently streaming online and via video on demand. Scheduling new installments of the “Masterpiece” epic as time-slot competition to the most popular show on the planet is pure folly; then again, something has to air at 9 p.m. Sundays. If you can’t serve up the flashiest show on television, might as well come in second.

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The Pride of Dijon by William John Hennessey, 1879 / "cowboy like me" by Taylor Swift

Daenerys is one of the best and most complex female characters in recent literature and television history. If she does turn out to be the secret antagonist of this series (depending on whose point of view you take), I will respect the series even more for taking this huge risk you typically don’t see when it comes to female characters, especially female characters in fantasy who are usually either all good or all bad. 

A really really good meta about Daenerys I found on twitter.

This is why I think Dany has always been one of my favourite characters, but I was never really sold on her actually getting the Throne once she got to Westeros, because it really revealed so much more about her motives that her storyline in Meeren sort of hid from me.

I get the feeling that before this is over he and Ceresi are going to get it on, at least once. He is her type after all. Why else cast an actor this attractive? He looks like Jamie does in the books. 

I can imagine Ceresi sleeping with him, thinking it’ll placate him (a callback to the Euron scene in episode one), only for him to immediately reply:

Harry: “That was all well and good, but you still need to pay the gold cloaks our salary. Our real salary.” 

I can’t wait for the memes if that happens. 

Don’t judge, but I ship this new character, Harry Strickland, with Sansa