Lena Headey confirms that at one point in the final seasons of Game of Thrones, Cersei actually was pregnant. Ugh. [Pajiba]
Two dudes play Aha’s “Take On Me” on a washing machine. [Dlisted]
Kim Kardashian & Kanye West celebrate six years of marriage. [Just Jared]
Are you into Lady Gaga + Ariana Grande? [LaineyGossip]
Swedish royals play with bees. [Go Fug Yourself]
This is why hair salons should not be opening up any time soon. [Towleroad]
Vice examines the 5G conspiracies. [OMG Blog]
Cheetah cubs at the National Zoo! [Jezebel]
Hilary Duff is not a sex trafficker. [The Blemish]
Amanda Bynes gives an update on her life. [Seriously OMG]
How is this new news? I always thought she was pregnant with Jaime’s child again and was looking for partner to pin it on when she died.
I thought everybody knew!
I really didn’t need to see that scene to know for sure that she was pregnant or that she wasn’t anymore.
I wish they kept the scene in. Team shit-writers destroyed Cersei’s character and everyone else’s in the last 2 seasons…I was just thinking about this yesterday! The Last Kingdom, on the other hand, is fire. Anyone else watch that, on Netflix? It’s fantastic!!!
I can’t get over how dirty they did Lena with that wig
UGH, I know. totally. Her hair WOULD have grown back by then…
What Hilary Duff did was way inappropriate to say the least. I saw that picture without asking for it and it made me very uncomfortable. Poor kid. What kind of parent put a picture of a naked 8 years old online ?
Good for Amanda. I hope she continues to thrive.
Ariane Grande and Lady Gaga’s song is… meh….
GoT could have wrapped up as well as LOTR, but they fouled it up. They ended it up with a kind of business as usual men running everything generally as they had before. Except for the Stark women and Brienne, all of the women with power were eliminated.
I still feel that Daenerys got a bad deal in terms of character development and in her hero’s journey.
Well the Stark queen was “good” because she got her power from a man, like a good little girl. And she didn’t plan on doing any gross things like freeing slaves or giving the peasants rights.
Which man? She was pushing for independence despite both of her brothers technically being her King in some form. Ultimately Bran agreed, but she still was the one who decided to fight for WF since she escaped Ramsay.
@AMM From her brother the King and the other, far more powerful, Lords. Sansa had explicitly only a few thousand troops left (the North was stripped of men by numerous wars) – that’s why Daenerys was needed in the first place, the North couldn’t field even enough troops to fight off Cersei let alone the AotD. If any kingdom had decided to act against her, she would have had no ability to defend the Northern borders. She barely had enough troops to hold her own castle. And even that was dependent on her cousin’s Vale Knights. Who, presumably, weren’t planning on sitting in Winterfell forever. Sansa as Queen in the North made a pretty picture, but made no practical sense. How exactly does she plan on avoiding becoming a vassal state?
It’s really cute how Sansa “decided” to retake Winterfell, but it takes, you know, more than cute ideas. It takes actually assembling armies and being able to lead them long-term.
This was one of the many ways the ending was so repugnant (aside from the creepy racism). They demonized the woman who had actually assembled troops and ruled kingdoms (incidentally giving up her crown in Mereen to found a republic there), and essentially stated that a woman whose power was dependent on her male relatives catering to her was morally better. How charming.
We will have to disagree. Daenerys was problematic throughout the books and the show, and while they certainly rushed the story near the end, they didn’t decide to make her a villain for no reason.
The whole story is dissecting the hero trope. Sansa got where she was at with no magic, no destiny, no heroic moments. She was a normal girl who used what limited things she had to her advantage to survive and get ahead. Which is more what GRRMs about. Abolishing slavery (while not setting up any other economic or political system before abandoning the areas) is great. She also managed to convince herself she was a God for all the great things she was able to do and became too ambitious. That was the point of her story. The more power she got, gained through good actions or bad actions, the more she was convinced that she was the one person who knew right from wrong. She could have stayed in the East and continued to do good things. Stabilize the regions after she freed them. But she wanted more.
But why is it only wrong for the woman to be “too ambitious”? To know right from wrong? They all do. Hell, the very first scene of the show is exactly that. Yet Ned Stark is held as a good man, too good for this evil world, and Daenerys is crazy. That makes no sense at all.
That said, I don’t know why anyone had faith in that show which ended just like it started, exploiting women all along.
Sansa is not exactly what I would call a “normal” girl. from a narrative perspective. She came from a very powerful noble family. Her story is the fall and the rise back to power, not coming from nothing. Oddly enough, the character her story parallels the most is Daenerys herself – being ground beneath the boot of the powerful but managing to claw their way back to the top using their skills and courage to do whatever it takes to survive – and in Westeros, to survive requires power. (Dany has dragons, but she wouldn’t have those unless she’d been brave enough to walk into an inferno.) The fact that the narrative never notes the difference between the power sought by the oppressed versus that of the privileged is a major misstep to me.
Frankly, the biggest problem I have with the direction of Daenerys is that it’s boring and f*cking redundant. You already have a mad queen throwing away the lives of people in her ambitious quest for power with no other justification. Creating another one is just lazy and demeaning. Daenerys should be your foil to Cersei. Have her realize what she’s becoming in her confrontation with Cersei. Have her romance with Jon and the faith and friendship of people like Missandei and Grey Worm be the human tie that keeps her from crossing the line, the key difference between her and Cersei, a person who has thrown away everything else for power – or have her toe the line and then be pulled back from it. Or, Christ, have her take her bloody vengeance and then walk away in the end because she got the throne, but because she lost herself and everybody she cared about, it means nothing! She realizes that she lost sight of everything she was working for and what she wanted to be. There are so many directions you could take her that don’t boil down to the need to taking out all of the powerful woman, except for the one that credits the men who raped and abused her for making her more than a “baby bird.”
The Veep finale was everything GOT was not — sad, shocking, fitting, brilliant. THAT is how you show a ruthless politician’s rise to power and the fallout from it. The difference in the quality of writing/directing was as wide as the pacific Ocean. I watch old Veep episodes all the time now, but have zero interest in seeing GOT (including the spinoffs) ever again.
WORD.
I feel the same way about HTGAWM. they ended it great.
The VEEP finale was a perfect send off to the show. Tom Hanks, ha