witchkitten

How are you liking them? I read them after the second season of the show.

Why? There is no reason to remake Four Weddings and a Funeral. It's not like the movie is missing something because it doesn't take place in modern times. Who is the audience for the remake supposed to be?

Louis looks so much like Kate. I think the boys favor her, although George has a lot of William too, while Charlotte favors Queen Elizabeth (i.e. William's side). I also find it interesting that Charlotte and now Louis (although it's too soon to know if it will last) seem to really like the attention of the crowds and play it up for the cameras, whereas George, the future King, seems more reserved. I think William and Harry were the same way. William seemed more reserved and uncomfortable with all the attention he received whereas Harry seemed to enjoy it.

I wasn't actually as outraged by the season finale as I was episode 5 or even episodes 4 and 3 because I already expected something truly awful. As soon as they had Arya kill the Night King in episode 3 with Jon and Bran having nothing to do with it and being completely ineffectual during the battle with the dead I knew this season wasn't going to go well. Don't get me wrong. When Arya first stabs him I thought it was an awesome moment but then I was left feeling unsatisfied and underwhelmed. I realized that while it was a "kickass" moment it really didn't make sense from a thematic standpoint. Arya had absolutely nothing to do with the Night King and had only learned of the WW threat two episodes earlier so her getting the kill just wasn't satisfying. There was no sense of "Finally, Arya gets to kill the Night King" because I never really connected her with that plot and neither did the writers. It really should have been Jon or Bran. Their storylines have been all about the WW threat and their respective connections to the Night King. Even if Arya was the one that stabbed him, it needed to be a team effort between her and Jon and/or Bran. By having her be the one to kill him they completely robbed Jon of his storyline and made his character even more underwhelming than he already was. Back to the finale. Why in the world would they still have a Night's Watch? There is no longer a White Walker threat, the reason the NW was created in the first place, and even the wildlings are on good terms with their southern neighbors. And even if the wildlings weren't on good terms with those on the other side of the wall, why would the Six Kingdoms send anyone to protect the North since it's a separate kingdom. Not to mention there is a huge gaping hole in the wall so what really can they do? It just doesn't make any sense like most of this season. I'm relieved the show is over so I can move on with my life but I should be sad. I invested 10 years of my life into the show, read all five books (and I had to slog through books four and five), read and participated in discussions online, and then to have them end like this (I'm taking about the entire season) was just so disappointing. I feel sorry for all the Star Wars fans out there because D&D (the showrunners) are slated to write the next big Star Wars trilogy. Instead of petitioning HBO to reshoot season 8 people should petition Disney to drop them from Star Wars and find more competent writers. I'm convinced that nearly every good writing decision they made on the series came from GRRM, despite books 4 and 5 being kind of a mess.

I thought it was the worst season finale I have ever watched and this has been the worst final season. I say that as someone who watched Battlestar Galactica, Lost, and How I Met Your Mother. I just felt like it failed in every respect. The mythology was handled terribly, the characters and their arcs were handled poorly, the pacing was terrible, the dialogue was uninspiring. Everything about it was bad. At least with Lost, though the answers to the mystery and the mythology were just horrible, the characters and their arcs were beautifully written. That’s why I was still invested in the finale, because I still cared about the characters. With GOT I just stopped caring. Tyrion and Arya were my favorite characters but I would have been fine if Dany had roasted them both. Tyrion in no way deserved to be hand of the king. Talk about failing upwards. Seasons one through four Tyrion was intelligent and totally would have deserved it but he’s been nothing short of a disaster since he left for Essos. This just illustrates the larger problem with the show since they ran out of book material which is that choices and actions stopped having consequences the way they did in the early seasons. Ned being beheaded, Robb being killed during the Red Wedding, those were horribly tragic events but they were earned (not deserved but earned). Ned’s choices led him to that end as did Robb’s choices. Tyrion and Jon have repeatedly failed upwards until the end in Jon’s case. Jon’s parentage not meaning anything was a huge misstep. The story would have been exactly the same had he really been Ned Stark’s bastard. What was th point of all those pregnancy anvils they dropped for Dany last season? They served no purpose. It’s almost like it was a dropped storyline and the fact that they were dropping plot points like that between seasons 7 and 8 shows in part why this season was a mess. We know they did this for at least some plot points because Cersei was supposed to have a miscarriage at the end of season 7 according to the released scripts. Brienne writing Jaime’s Kingsguard page was pathetic after what he did to her and after all his character development was flushed down the toilet so they could give their favorite character, Cersei, the best sendoff she could hope for. You can tell GRRM told them Jaime and Cersei will die together and Brienne will finish Jaime’s Kingsguard page so they included those plot points but he also clearly told them Jaime is the valonqar (younger brother from the book prophecy) and will kill her in the end, and they dropped that destroying his character and arc and making Brienne’s actions just pathetic. Jon’s character was so useless. He’s one of my favorite book characters but on the show he is stupid and ineffectual. I’m glad they had him and Ghost have a moment but they couldn’t have spent a little more on CGI to have him go off with Jon when he joins (or escorts home, it wasn’t clear) the wildlings. The only part of the finale that moved me besides Jon and Ghost was Drogon finding Dany’s body. That was a knife to the heart right there. The CGI dragon out acted every single person in the finale. Bran being endgame king was something that could have made sense had the setup been there. The writers knew he was going to be the endgame king since season 4 at least and yet they dropped him completely from season 5 and they did no character development for him. He has not only been completely uninteresting since he lost everything that made him human, but he was also totally useless the entire previous two seasons. And don’t get me started on the North gaining their independence. D&D love Sansa and part of me thinks this was their way of showing love for one of their favorites because the North being independent makes no sense. Why would the North even care if a Stark is on the throne? And if they were granted independence there’s no way Dorne and the Iron Islands wouldn’t also demand their independence as well. In fact, the Iron Islands were already granted independence by Dany so they should have been insisting on it from the beginning. Quite honestly, I would have been happier if the last scene had been of a bed in Winterfell and we see Bran awaken from being pushed out the window and it turning out it was all a dream, and I hate those endings. It would have been better than what we actually got though.

They’ve supposedly known this is where Dany is going since at least season 4 and maybe even season 1. Weiss and Benioff just aren’t good writers. I could see Dany slowly sinking into the depths of madness or I could see her become very Machiavellian and burn the Red Keep, killing Cersei but also all the innocent people there, but burning the entire city, after the surrender, was not true to her character. Not being able to handle being disliked when she was strongly disliked in Mereen for a long time is also unbelievable. No one’s actions this season have made any sense.

This season has been such a major disappointment for me, and last night’s episode was the worst. Dany’s evil or crazy (people aren’t sure which) wasn’t earned. Cersei getting to tragically die in the arms of the man she loves was so ridiculous. You can tell Weiss and Benioff love the character and just couldn’t let her have her just desserts. I think that’s the reason they had Jaime go back to save her rather than to kill her the way I think Martin would go in the never to be published books. Having her killed by a building was so unsatisfying. Jon and Tyrion are both useless and stupid. Show Tyrion used to be brilliant but the last few seasons he’s dropped about 50 IQ points. Show Jon was never that brilliant, which is tragic considering how awesome his book counterpart is, but since his resurrection he has been stupid and useless. If there wasn’t only one final episode I would be dropping the show now and cancelling HBO because what I just watched was so poorly written it isn’t worth my time. /rantover

I love how Meghan is gushing about how easy Archie is. It’s such a naive new mom thing to do. Nearly all newborns are easy. If a baby is colicky (and I’m not saying Archie will be—20% of babies are so more likely not) it doesn’t start until two weeks past the due date. That’s also when babies start to get a bit fussy during the evening, called the witching hour (though at its peak usually lasts between 4:00/5:00 and 9:00/10:00 so “hour” is a misnomer) which is more common than colic. If you’re lucky enough to have a baby that isn’t colicky and doesn’t go through the witching hour then the baby usually “wakes up” somewhere between two and six weeks. It’s far too early to know if they have an “easy” baby or not but most moms are fooled in those first few weeks. ETA: Also love the name and the pictures.

I'm confused. Why don't Princess Anne's children have titles while Prince Andrew's children and Prince Edward's children do? And why do Prince Andrew's daughters have the title of Princess when Prince Edward's children only have the title of Viscount and Lady? I'm pretty solid on the laws of succession but the title thing confuses me.

I think so too. Doesn’t mean it will work out but they seem healthy for the time being. They’re going to have a bigger wedding in France this summer but because they’re not French citizens they had to get married here as well.

Congratulations to your daughter. Be prepared for her to be a total wimp in the cold when she comes home for the fall and winter holidays. This is the thing my east coast friends have teased me about the most. Also, by the end of her four years her hair is liable to get several shades lighter (if she’s not blonde already) from either the sun, a salon, or both. 😉

I was very sad to see such a historic landmark burn. I felt the same when many of those historic landmarks were destroyed by bombs in Iraq war (both of them). I’m glad Notre Dame was saved and the damage can and will be repaired. That said, the Catholic Church is worth tens of billions of dollars. They should pay for the repairs (and perhaps the French government since it’s a tourist attraction). All of the donations should be given to people and organizations in need. I’m glad GoFundMe accounts were set up for the black churches that burned. I hate to be so cynical but I feel like everything is a reminder of how unequal our world is in terms of cultural importance and economics.

I’m not convinced Macaulay Culkin was molested either. His fame might have protected him. It gave him power, which his other victims did not have. Sexual predators are usually good at picking victims that are vulnerable and less likely to tell anyone.

The New York Times lists all the people indicted, their role in the scheme, and their professions. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/us/felicity-huffman-lori-loughlin-massimo-giannulli.html?fallback=0&recId=1IQRaokigfsMWV2B9e3mA9kXIi5&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=CA&recAlloc=top_conversion&geoCountry=US&blockId=most-popular&imp_id=432648434

Why couldn’t they have gotten their kids in the old fashioned way by donating a library or something? Wealthy people bribe schools all the time but usually it’s hard to prove because the money is given in the form of donations. Bush Jr. and Jared Kushner got into Yale and Harvard respectively because of their parents’ wealth.