Game of Thrones: The Winds of Winter

I was waiting for an inevitable nut punch in this episode of Game of Thrones and it surprised me by not giving me one in the immensely satisfying season finale, The Winds of Winter. Here are some of the most memorable moments from this episode.

Cersei was Dynamite

Cersei played an incredibly explosive game, having Maester Pycelle murdered by the "little birds" and igniting the wildfire beneath the Sept which essentially disintegrated everyone who did anything bad to her, including Lancel & Kevan Lannister, pretty much the whole Tyrell family, and most importantly, the High Sparrow. Margaery played Sherlock, put two and two together and realized they should leave, but the Faith Militant's blind faith killed them all in a brilliant burst of green flame. And I must also say the score during the whole beginning of this episode was awesome.

Foam Batarang Project

Batman Begins came out 11 years ago and is one of my favorite Batman films. I decided to do a little project and make one of Batman's batarangs out of foam. Here's how I did it.

I started by finding a batarang template online. The one I used can be found on pinterest here. It even has dimensions on it so you can size it correctly when you print it.

I cut out the template, and traced two patterns onto 6mm foam.

Game of Thrones: Battle of the Bastards

Battle of the Bastards was hands down the best episode of Game of Thrones this year, and may be one of the best ever. Director Miguel Sapochnik managed to mix Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, 300, and Gladiator together to deliver an excellent episode. The even more astonishing thing is that everything that happens was expected to happen, yet it was still an immensely satisfying hour of TV.

Since this episode is fairly straightforward, I'm not going to recap it. I'm going to recommend you actually watch it, but I am going to run through some of the most memorable moments of Battle of the Bastards.

Attack of the Dragons

I complained about last week's episode feeling like a victim of budget cuts. Well it certainly looks like they funneled all that CGI money into this one because Dany's dragons are full sized, glorious looking, and absolutely lethal creatures that make short work of one of the Master's ships.

Game of Thrones: No One

Did anybody else get the feeling that No One, the latest episode of Game of Thrones felt like the victim of budget cuts? Because there could have been some great moments, but ultimately the way those moments were presented felt anticlimactic. Maybe those funds were funneled into next week's hopefully badass episode? Anyway...

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

When we left the Hound last week, he had taken up an axe and was on his way to obliterate the Brotherhood Without Banners members who slaughtered his friends. And obliterate he did. He came across four nitwits and quickly dispatched them. Then he came across Beric Dondarrion, the leader of the Brotherhood Without Banners, and Thoros of Myr, the drunken Red Priest who keeps resurrecting Beric. And it turns out those idiots who slaughtered that poor commune were about to be hanged for their crimes. The Hound worked out a deal with Beric so he could kill two of them. He was also offered a chance to join the Brotherhood and travel north to fight White Walkers. The Hound would be a great asset in fighting White Walkers, but imagine he dies up there and gets turned? Now you've got a hulking White Walking Hound. And what if he's attacking alongside a White Walking Hodor?!? I'm sure there's already fan fiction of this going around.

Warning: Book Spoiler below.

Also of note in the books, Beric Dondarrion gave his life so Catelyn Stark could live again as the zombie Lady Stoneheart. Beric being alive here seems to mean this plotline will most likely not occur. My question is why is this an issue for book fans? Catelyn Stark was just about the most irritating character on the TV show up there with Skyler on Breaking Bad. Why would you want her to come back? Is Lady Stoneheart that much of a better character?

Game of Thrones: The Broken Man

Season Six of Game of Thrones has been a giant snowball that's just been gaining speed hurtling down the mountain these past seven weeks. So much has happened, yet it still feels like there's so much left! Here are my nerdy views on The Broken Man.

Arya's Poor Decisions

Arya just pissed off a league of assassins and she's just nonchalantly walking about like nothing's going to happen to her? She should have totally been on guard and mistrustful of anybody considering these assassins can also disguise themselves to look like anybody. While it was shocking to see her stabbed by the Waif, it wasn't entirely surprising considering how casually she was acting. She kinda deserved that stabbing.

Devastator Weathering Project

One day I looked at my Combiner Wars Devastator, which is BTW still available on Amazon, and said to myself, "He looks way too clean. Constructicons should be dirty!" And so started another project. This time to weather the crap out of Devastator and make him look like the filthy Transformer he's supposed to look like.

This was really just a simple weathering project using black and brown acrylic paint, watering it down a little, slathering it on Devastator, then wiping most of it off leaving the paint in the low areas where grime would naturally accumulate. This highlighted a lot of the detail on the figure that got washed out because it was all one color. Anyway, here are some before and after shots of the individual Constructicons.

Scavenger before.

Scavenger after. I also used an airbrush to paint the tire treads.

Game of Thrones: Blood of My Blood

After last week's emotional episode, Game of Thrones gave us a breather with Blood of My Blood, where some characters returned to being themselves again, and other characters just flat out returned.

The Return of Drogon

Drogon's back! And he's apparently been eating all the goats in Essos. This guy is growing bigger faster than Bran! Just look at this comparison from last season to the latest episode.

Dany now has 100,000 Dothraki followers, and Daario mentions that they'd need a thousand ships to transport them, the Unsullied, and Second Sons all to Westeros. Isn't it convenient how last week Euron Greyjoy said that he'd build that exact number of boats? Or was it Yara? Does anybody really care about Pyke anyway?

The Return of Arya Stark

Arya was like 3 credits away from graduating the Faceless Men Academy, but she decided the "No one" life wasn't for her and returned to being Arya again. Apparently, Arya prefers to do her killing with a purpose instead of the arbitrary way the Faceless Men do. Now Waif has been sent to kill her. Considering Arya got her ass handed to her repeatedly by Waif, I don't see how Arya gets out of this. Now of course if she blindfolds herself, she might survive since it seems like her fighting skills have gotten shittier since her sight returned.