his fucking speed boats are annoying af though. Feels like weak writing to make Dany weaker for the sake of suspense.
Nahh... it's just that the Ironborn are expert swift-strike raiders and top-tier naval combatants with lots and lots of oars per load, speedy longboats, and skilled helmsmen, while Dany's little sailboats are a bunch of cargo ships manned by 110% desert-specc'd slaves, merchants, and eunuchs striking out into completely unfamiliar territory, and with no expectation of
naval ambush. Mind you, they never figured the boats would be important at all in the first place except as a means of delivering troops to the Rock, so leaving none of their soldiers behind to defend their ships was (apparently) a reasonable calculated risk to take, at the time.
Really annoyed at how Cersei hasn't been punished for her season 6 play. The entire country should consider her a blasphemer. Every noble should consider her a traitor. Everyone with a brain should be disgusted with how she allowed the faith militant to seize control over the seven kingdoms.
Hold up - they actually are. At the end of Season 6, all she has left on her side is: House Lannister and their bannermen, because those people don't really have much of a choice in the matter; House Frey and their bannermen, because nobody else would so much as touch the Freys with a ten-foot pole at this point unless that pole had a spearhead at the end of it; the Goldcloaks, who number less than two thousand and are a far cry from veteran soldiers; and the Ironborn (sort of).
Euron's navy shouldn't be that large, nor should his forces be in good shape after a failed northern occupation etc.
Maybe he captured a bunch of ships from the battle with the Greyjoy kids? "A thousand ships" is still a ridiculous number to have built up in that kind of timespan, but then, he doesn't necessarily have anywhere near that number, and certainly wouldn't need it. In Paradox terms, he attacked a stack of cogs with a fleet of galleys in an inland sea (but if EUIV also accounted for the cogs being devoid of fighters, and the galleys being packed with career pirate crews).
And can the fucking Unsullied use a phalanx for once in their fucking lives jesus christ man they're fighting in corridors and shit. Same thing happened during Barristan Selmy's final moments, the unsullied he were with were in a corridor and got jumped by cunts with daggers so they try to 1v1 them individually???
Yeah, I'm with you on this. The books were pretty clear on how the power of the Unsullied had nothing at all to do with their (actually pretty unremarkable) individual combat prowess, and everything to do with their iron discipline and unyielding, airtight infantry formations. It's even more ironic because curbing that individualistic, glory-seeking urge to run out and go absolutely apeshit on the enemy by oneself, hack-'n'-slash, come-on-bring-it-I'LL-TAKE-YOU-ALL-ON, is
exactly why the cut their balls off in the first place. So they'd chill out and stay in formation, instead.
Not to mention that the Battle of the Bastards episode showed pretty well that the writers do know how much of a fuckhuge big deal a well-formed shieldwall can be, and the Battle at the Wall was a case-in-point on how badly a solid cavalry charge can fuck up a much larger force of undisciplined, loosely-formed, or otherwise flanked or exposed infantry units. The Unsullied are a fighting force the slavers of the Free Cities created specifically to counter the Dothraki raiders, and the way the show has portrayed their fighting style suggests that they'd get absolutely shat on in that kind of match-up and they
obviously know that but they're plowing ahead with it anyway because they insist that all of Danaerys's stuff has to look as cool as is physically fucking possible for it to look at any time that it's in action.
This bugs me in pretty much the same way that Ser Arthur Dayne's twin longswords bugged me. They actually
did manage to make it look pretty cool, (unlike that fuckin' fiasco what went down in Dorne), but just... so... unnecessarily dumb... Just have him two-hand a sword, damn it. It can still
look pretty fuckin' cool.
The show can be so lazy sometimes and it's wearing me down. I can cop some fastforwarding and simpler plot lines (I can of get how the Tyrell's fell so easily without an heir and some existing tension with their largest bannermen) but bloody hell idk. I'm sick of every battle being a "Decisive victory" in a sense. Fine, if you're gonna do shit writing, go for it, but stop letting characters turn on God mode all the time?
To be fair, Whispering Wood and Casterly Rock were far from decisive. The latter definitely gave the Lannisters a huge leg up - but then, nothing less is to be expected when the build-up included Randyll Tarly taking command of the Lannister's forces. That man doesn't fuck around at all.
Nonetheless, Danaerys still has all the Dothraki that King Robert was so worried about back in Season 1, when Westeros was more-or-less a unified force at full manpower and with a lot more resources to spare. She
probably still has the Dornish (although I wouldn't be surprised if the writers decide that Ellaria Sand counts as enough of a "hostage" that the Dornish actually stand down to keep them from killing her, because the Dornish arc in the show makes absolutely no sense at all). She has a basically unassailable fortress as her center of command. She has three big ass dragons, and said dragons are only getting bigger. The Lannisters have solved their money problems for now, and have taken some big chunks out of Danaerys's forces, but they need to maintain forces at Casterly Rock to keep the Unsullied out of the picture until they either surrender or starve (and Unsullied don't surrender), they're still not yet any closer to re-evicting the Targaryens from Dragonstone, and time is absolutely on Danaerys's side (insofar as it can be on the side of any living creature in Westeros right now, anyway).
Also, if they're cutting Victarion from the show, then they gotta merge him a bit into Euron, would make him way cooler. Wearing full plate on a boat and making note of it would have been nice and perfect for some visual juxtaposition, while also making him menacing instead of some weird cunt in drag.
Show Euron's a major disappointment, even if he does kick some serious ass in combat. (Sand Snakes blown away in the storm.)
Also, not liking the overall theme of this season. I want to see the aftermath of one of the largest wars the seven Kingdoms has had in recent memory. We've seen this to an extent with the Northern scenes, and I liked it, Jon had to fight for every man when he headed towards The Battle of The Bastards, and I want more of it. If Cersei wants to fight a war on 69 fronts, fine, but she's gotta be struggling. Jaime should have to deal with tired and hungry soldiers. He should have to struggle recruiting more. Same with any force from the Reach that is being added to the Lannister Army. I thought this was being foreshadowed in the Ed Sheeran scene, Arya felt bad taking their food. NOPE, Lannister Army is Rome incarnate, legends, demi gods, self sustaining self ejaculating machines who don't give a fuck.
They had a bunch of food and manpower from the Freys, who not only kept themselves clear of the worst of the fighting throughout, but also now control the Riverlands and its abundance of food and money.
I'm still happy with the show myself, but even though it's not on the level of the books, it still always had a good level of nuance and details throughout it in order to give everything meaning. Now it's just plot point after plot point shoved into every episode. Jon is trapped in dragonstone after one episode when he barely just announced he'd be going there. In previous seasons, he wouldn't even get to dragonstone until episode 5 in a normal season. Jorah is just cured of his greyscale because... Why not? What? There's no fallout from that action on Sam's part? Jorah is just okay and that's that?
I'm wondering about that too, actually. Did Jorah literally go back to a full, healthy if mildly rash-covered coat of skin
overnight?
