Watching a Netflix show nowadays is like curling up next to a warm fire on a cold winter’s night and reading your new favorite book and just as you get to the good part someone walks past, yanks it out of your hands and throws it into the fire.
Imagine making a YouTube video 3 months ago, one that is par for the course for your channel when you decide to engage in discussing Public Figures, and one guy takes it so poorly he shuts his channels and socials down, then tries to come back- twice, then alludes to trying to kill himself- twice.
And the only things you have done publicly since the videos release was try to help the people he fucked over, answer questions about if he has personally contacted you in regards to HIM helping HIS OWN VICTIMS, and a single ‘Huh’ tweet.
genuinely thought the pipe in the s2 finale was a smoking pipe. Like, woah, cool antique pipe! I didn’t know they used to make those in metal!
then Jon stepped out to take a smoke and I was like “oh is he using the pipe? Might wanna clean it first, who knows what’s been inside it.”
Elias walks in “oh hey, possible murderer, how ya doing? Oh Jon left the pipe? Makes sense, makes sense…. Oh. Uh. Hm.”
“Wait how the fuck- damn Elias must be pretty strong. Wonder if it’s gonna break. Definitely Gertrude’s killer. What, is he gonna take a smoke right after killing jurgen?”
………
“OH YOU MEAN LIKE A WATER PIPE OHHH”
(But I low-key still kinda wish it was a smoking one it would’ve been kinda neat)
This minnie disagreed with returning to hunt prime once her rick was ready to leave the rebellion, so he went off on his own instead, and she stayed fighting the federation. Her Rick periodically returns to try and goad her into helping him again, becoming more erratic, pathetic, and drunk with each visit 😔
annoying to already see people discoursing about this “meleys the traitor” scene.
greens will say, pretending to care about the smallfolk, that they have a right to be mad about the attack on Aegon’s coronation because of the collateral damage to the smallfolk, which, fair enough, however stupid I may feel that scene was, it did do some unnecessary damage to the smallfolk of king’s landing.
HOWEVER.
if the scene is uncritically people buying into otto’s propoganda, it’s not only stupid it’s also an annoying departure from the books and a continuation of got writers (first d&d now condal and hess) treating the smallfolk as if they’re stupid which they are not. Look at the actual text of F&B:
Eight hundred knights and squires and common men lost their lives that day as well. Another hundred perished not long after, when Prince Aemond and Ser Criston Cole took Rook’s Rest and put its garrison to death. Lord Staunton’s head was carried back to King’s Landing and mounted above the Old Gate…but it was the head of the dragon Meleys, drawn through the city on a cart, that awed the crowds of smallfolk into silence. Septon Eustace tells us that thousands left King’s Landing afterward, until the Dowager Queen Alicent ordered the city gates closed and barred.
Yes, in both the books and the show, the Greens managing to kill Meleys the Red Queen and Rhaenys the Queen That Never Was is a big victory for them and of course Otto is going to turn it into a propaganda moment. It's even understandable that some of the smallfolk would turn on Rhaenys (in the show only) after her (stupidly written) stunt at the coronation. But those last two lines are crucial because it shows us what the smallfolk are really thinking as the Dance kicks off - "If the Greens are willing to disrespect even the nobility after their death, if they are willing to parade around the head of one of their great, terrifying, beloved, and respected dragons, treat Meleys the Red Queen like she's nothing but game hunted for sport...seven hells what are these people going to do to the rest of us nobodies?"
And that is why, if the show takes the route of erasing how terrified the smallfolk are after the Battle of the Rook's Rest, it's a complete disservice to the smallfolk just to have them buy Otto's propaganda hook line and sinker. They are not stupid, and when they realize very early on in the Dance just how awful and violet this conflict is going to get, they attempt to leave for safety and it's only Alicent locking them into King's Landing like lambs to the slaughter that stops the exodus from King's Landing.
Cutting that scene takes away not just the perceptiveness of the smallfolk of King's Landing to make the Greens look better, it also takes away one of the crucial moments that leads to the Storming of the Dragon Pit; after realizing that dragons can be killed by regular humans and not just dragonriders because they are forced to look at Meleys' severed head, then locked into a city that gets progressively more dangerous, with dragons that are getting increasingly more aggravated because of the continued violence of the Dance, the smallfolk take the only course of action they feel they have left to them and that's to rise up and massacre the dragons in the pit in a vain and violent attempt to protect themselves from the endless slaughter that the Greens forced them to live through.