#and dany? cersei was probably not even one of the worst rulers westeros had

[cesei]

if we’d actually seen cersei ruling as queen we would have had two options, both of which would have been better than the reality.

1) if she was a GOOD ruler, we would have felt so much worse during the sack of kings landing, as these people who were finally under a good ruler were murdered by a conquerer

2) if she was a BAD ruler, we would have felt more supportive of dany on her takeover and empathised with her idea of ‘liberating’ kings landing, and still would have felt worse for the people of kings landing who were suffering under yet another terrible ruler and were killed anyway.

but instead we saw nothing of how cersei lannister ruled the seven kingdoms. not one thing.

#let us EMPATHISE GODDAMNIT #cersei lannister #got #game of thrones #season 8 #asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #lena headey #i mean i can’t imagine her girl squad of her #the mountain and qyburn were doing an EXCELLENT job #but compared to aerys #joffrey #robert #and dany? cersei was probably not even one of the worst rulers westeros had #even though she had a fairly shit track record of caring about people that werent her family #oh well

[astradrifting]

This is kind of inspired by this recent ask I sent to @esther-dot about Jon’s characterisation and Jonsa shippers’ apparent disregard for it, because it made me think of another part of Jon’s characterisation that is really integral to who he is. Mainly, that Jon really loves his brothers. Especially Robb. His rival and best friend and constant companion. Jon envies him, competes with him, buried a formative traumatic memory where he was deeply hurt by him... but ultimately loves him. Complex relationships with his brothers, both the Starks and his Night’s Watch brothers, are a running theme in Jon’s chapters.

Speaking of Jon’s brothers...

Aegon VI and Robb have a lot of potential parallels, actually. The “Young” moniker, red-haired counselors who are also their parents, trained to be the heir to a great kingdom from a young age, the barely younger half-brother Jon borne of their father’s dishonour of their mother… one that they might both have a good relationship with despite that?

The show tried to play with Jon ‘accepting’ his Targaryen lineage through the jonerice romance, very unconvincingly because it was simultaneously undermining it at every opportunity, in what was maybe a half-assed attempt at Pol!Jon (”They’ll all come to see you for what you are” isn’t anything but a threat in all contexts).

Jon will ultimately choose the Starks over everything else, that’s not really a question. But if Jon were to genuinely connect with another Targaryen, it’d likely be easier for him to find kinship with a half-brother than with an aunt - he has a basis for positive relationships with trueborn half-brothers, while the only aunt figure he’s ever known about is a) long dead and b) actually his mother. I think it’d both make more sense and be more compelling for GRRM to leverage Jon’s existing complex relationships with brotherhood by having him interact with and build a relationship with Aegon, than a rushed and out-of-character romance with Dany. 

Jon also is already primed to believe that Aegon is the real deal, that he was saved as a baby, because he’s already done the exact same thing himself - he swapped out a baby of royal blood who was in danger for a common-born boy, and then sent him halfway across the world for safety (side note: if Septa Lemore is Ashara, and if the baby was actually Ashara’s son as theorised here by @agentrouka-blog, that would just strengthen the parallel, because it would be his body double’s mother caring for him, as Gilly has to do for Mance’s son).

They’re definitely going to come into conflict first - politically, Jon will likely be in a position of power in the North by the time they meet, maybe as the KitN through Robb’s will or regent for Rickon, and probably will fight for Northern independence, while Aegon is fighting to be king of the Seven Kingdoms, not 6. Personally, it will be hard to get past the fact that Jon is the direct result of Rhaegar dishonouring Elia, plus that the Kingsguard who should have been protecting her were all stationed in Dorne, guarding Jon’s mother (in whatever capacity). But these interactions, a conflict and eventual friendship/brotherhood between them, would all be a lot more layered than jonerice can really offer. If a relationship between Jon and Dany was truly all that GRRM has been building up to, then there would have been no need for R+L=J - it adds nothing to that storyline, it doesn’t even make it a forbidden romance, because aunt-nephew is hardly the worst incest the Targaryens have engaged in.

It’s almost inevitable that Da*nerys is going to kill Aegon VI/Young Griff in the books, likely by burning him with dragonfire, in the Second Dance of the Dragons. The weird Dragonpit meeting in the show was very contrived, but it does make sense for Dany to meet the ruler on the Iron Throne at least once in a semi-peaceful context. In the show, she used her dragons only to intimidate Cersei, but she didn’t have a personal grievance with her. Aegon is in much more danger during such a meeting. After all she will think he is a pretender, and she doesn’t much care for the rules of safe conduct, as she showed to the envoys from Yunkai.

Dany shrugged, and said, "Dracarys."

The dragons answered. Rhaegal hissed and smoked, Viserion snapped, and Drogon spat swirling red-black flame. It touched the drape of Grazdan's tokar, and the silk caught in half a heartbeat. 

[...]

"You swore I should have safe conduct!" the Yunkish envoy wailed.

"Do all the Yunkai'i whine so over a singed tokar? I shall buy you a new one... if you deliver up your slaves within three days. Elsewise, Drogon shall give you a warmer kiss." She wrinkled her nose. "You've soiled yourself. Take your gold and go, and see that the Wise Masters hear my message."

(ASOS, Dany IV)

"Ah, there is the thorn in the bower, my queen," said Hizdahr zo Loraq. "Sad to say, Yunkai has no faith in your promises. They keep plucking the same string on the harp, about some envoy that your dragons set on fire."

"Only his tokar was burned," said Dany scornfully.

(ADWD, Dany VI)

So Dany will burn the Blackfyre pretender, and everyone will be happy and cheer to see the rightful queen, the last Targaryen, Slayer of Lies, Breaker of Chains, Insert-The-Million-Other-Titles-Here. Right?

Except how would she prove that he’s an imposter? She can’t exactly roll up with an Alt Shift X video pointing out that Illyrio has said some weird things about Aegon. Is Varys going to have an attack of remorse and explain his whole plot, complete with Blackfyre family tree? Or maybe she’ll explain that she went on a vision quest in Qarth and Aegon totally matches up with the vague symbolism that a bunch of drugged up warlocks told her before she set them on fire?

I don’t think it’s going to matter if Aegon is fake or not, and we might never find out either way. The mystery of his identity isn’t his main narrative, and all of his significance to the story and to multiple other characters is removed if he’s proved to not be Aegon VI. Him being proved fake would just make this plotline a weird, unnecessary digression on Dany’s journey to being the righteous and true queen, his death just another #girlboss moment for her. That’s definitely going to be her perception of it, but once she reaches Westeros we won’t have to rely on only her POV of her actions. History is written by the winners, and no one’s going to miss that it’s a lot more convenient for Dany if the boy with a stronger claim than her turns out to have been fake all along. Arianne and the Dornish are definitely not going to take it lying down, and neither is Jon. He’s not going to fall in love with the woman who murdered his brother, especially by burning him alive. ADWD has plenty to say about how much he hates death by fire.

“Men say that freezing to death is almost peaceful. Fire, though … do you see the candle, Gilly?”

She looked at the flame. “Yes.”

“Touch it. Put your hand over the flame.”

Her big brown eyes grew bigger still. She did not move.

“Do it.” Kill the boy. “Now.”

Trembling, the girl reached out her hand, held it well above the flickering candle flame.

“Down. Let it kiss you.”

Gilly lowered her hand. An inch. Another. When the flame licked her flesh, she snatched her hand back and began to sob.

“Fire is a cruel way to die. Dalla died to give this child life, but you have nourished him, cherished him. You saved your own boy from the ice. Now save hers from the fire.”

(ADWD, Jon II)

Funnily enough, the same fire as a kiss imagery from Dany burning the envoy’s tokar appeared there too, also used as a threat. 

If he is not a kinslayer, he is the next best thing. [...] What sort of man can stand by idly and watch his own brother being burned alive?

(ADWD, Jon IX)

So Aegon’s death is not going to be a triumphant victory for Dany, after which everyone proclaims her the true queen. It’s likely to just solidify opposition to her, from every corner of Westeros. If it happens during a summit or negotiation, it’d be even more of a tragic parallel to Robb and the Red Wedding; the young king murdered off of the battlefield, at an event where he was promised safe conduct. Featuring Dany in the role of Roose Bolton and Tywin Lannister. Tywin’s already died a very undignified death, and Roose Bolton looks to be on his way too.

I think the tragedy of Aegon’s death would also hit harder if we see it through Jon, as a main POV, or at least the aftermath of it. Jon was integral at the Dragonpit meeting after all, and probably would be at a peace summit or negotiation between the leaders of Westeros and the invading force.

In ASOS, there’s a curious lack of Jon’s reaction to Robb’s death. We see his initial reaction to Bran and Rickon’s supposed deaths when he gets back to Castle Black, but he doesn’t even know about Robb’s death until Stannis arrives to defeat the wildlings, and we’re not shown the moment he’s told about it. He barely even thinks about it, not even a mention until he meets with Stannis on top of the Wall:

“Your brother was the rightful Lord of Winterfell. If he had stayed home and done his duty, instead of crowning himself and riding off to conquer the riverlands, he might be alive today. Be that as it may. You are not Robb, no more than I am Robert.”

The harsh words had blown away whatever sympathy Jon might have had for Stannis. “I loved my brother,” he said.

(ASOS, Jon XI)

And that’s literally all we get that is specifically about Robb’s death - the rest of Jon’s chapters, his guilt and grief is about the loss of all his siblings, and the idea of stealing Winterfell from them. It doesn’t really make sense for him to not think about it at all, considering how close they were. This reminds me of how he has a non-reaction to Sansa’s marriage to Tyrion as well, as talked about in this post by @agentrouka-blog. Part of this could be Jon’s tendency towards denial and suppression of all his feelings, but it also points to GRRM explicitly obscuring his reaction - perhaps because he’s going to explore it in the wake of another brother dying a very similar death? One that this time he’ll be there to witness?

#astra rambles #meta #speculation #half speculation half 'my wildest dreams and hopes' #anti daenerys targaryen #anti jonerys #jon snow #aegon vi targaryen #jon and aegon #anti got #because i do dunk on the show a lot in this lmao #i've spent far too long on this and had to delete five tirades against the show already

[turtle-paced]

GoT Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

This post is also on my wordpress.

Well, this is it. The final push. The worst season of Game of Thrones.

Let’s get started.

8.01 – Winterfell

In one respect, this series has defeated me. No counting. I just want this done. God knows the problems got worse than nudity.

(0:09) It has to be said, the new opening credits are one of the best things about this season. Possibly the best thing about the season. However, we may all have been tipped off by how this was going to go in that we never see ice advance on King’s Landing, and the end of the credits focuses on the Iron Throne.

(2:26) So we start the season with a pretty good idea – a direct callback to the opening of season one when Robert Baratheon arrived at Winterfell, and watching this procession of relevant characters through Arya’s eyes again. I’m not entirely sold on the music cue, however, which is out and out the Baratheon leitmotif.

(3:08) Likewise, this landscape shot is also a good idea. Does some good showing. One, the snowy landscape. These are our conditions for the duration. Two, we see the amount of assistance Dany’s providing, as well as the discipline of the Unsullied.

(3:41) This is the first time Arya’s seen Jon in years and it’s a damn good thing the directors decided to let her show an emotion for it. Everyone suffers from the directors’ persistent idea that power = stoicism.

(4:17) Showing Arya’s got a reaction to Sandor and Gendry’s arrival in Winterfell gives us more than “these people are here now”. Which is why characters should be allowed to emote.

(4:32) First line of dialogue in s8 is a eunuch joke! Not even exposition. Eunuch joke. Like we’ve never heard one of them before.

(4:40) It’s not any funnier for Varys calling Tyrion out on this only to get another eunuch joke in reply.

(4:47) The juxtaposition of Missandei and Gray Worm here shows us another unpleasant thing that’s going to run throughout the season: the racism. This racism, here shown in the North being hostile to people of colour, contextualises the entire concept of Northern independence. This sort of juxtaposition undermines the argument that Northern independence is all about not being ruled from King’s Landing, and brings in a nasty undertone that the Northerners don’t want to be ruled by anyone who – gasp – includes people of colour in their cause. While I think it’s valid to depict the North as pretty well xenophobic, xenophobia and racism are not exactly appealing character traits.

Frankly, I don’t think the writers added it up when plotting out the ending. The North don’t look like they’ve been put upon by bad and unjust administration, they look like racist fuckheads complaining about rescues they don’t like. And yes, this impacts how Dany comes across – she’s the one with people of colour in her advisory team, and she never even mentions removing them to help the Northerners feel at ease. It’s hard not to see the implicit position as being “the North should get over this point.”

(5:12) “I warned you. Northerners don’t much trust outsiders.” In hindsight, this looks to me as the first set up for the idea that ‘Dany wants everyone to cheer her and is very sad then very insane when she does not receive the love to which she feels she’s entitled.’ See above re: complaining about rescues they don’t like. Is Dany so out of line for expecting a little gratitude?

(6:13) Speaking of no emotion. Oh boy. Poor Bran. This is the first time he’s seen his brother for years, and he gets to show mild curiosity. This is the character whose rule we’re supposed to leave off on, feeling good about the future of Westeros. But if he doesn’t care, why should we?

(7:35) Bran drops the bombshell that they’ll be dealing with a zombie dragon, that the Wall has fallen, and the dead are marching south. So there’s our context. Apocalyptic, imminent trouble. Everyone enjoy your episode of people not liking Daenerys against a backdrop of people preparing for apocalyptic, imminent trouble. I think these things probably should have been reversed.

(8:34) More preparing for a final showdown at Winterfell. Again, something else we should have take as a poor sign for the season’s structural integrity, as there was clearly no way they could drag out the build-up for four episodes.

(9:05) “It’s not important.” Ah yes, a great recommendation for this character’s political skills. Let’s just keep that in mind for the people who immediately think ‘oh yes Jon would be way better than Dany as ruler’.

(9:26) “When I left Winterfell I told you we need allies or we will die.” There is that. This is one thing we can get behind show!Jon for seeing better than the rest of the Northern cast. Jon will be proved correct on this count.

Though again, really, there is neither explanation nor excuse for the lack of discussion about a political marriage between Jon and Daenerys as a means of bringing the North into her realm in a position of greater strength and dignity. That’s just a gaping plothole, left unaddressed because otherwise the plot doesn’t work.

The plot didn’t even work anyway.

(9:32) Sansa stink-eye is most obvious here. Barely concealed hostillity to the people here to save you really is a good idea, isn’t it? Great politics.

(9:57) Tyrion gets up here to make a speech. While not being able to keep your mouth shut is endemic to the Lannister family as a whole and a valid character flaw, it’s not come out very intentionally in the last few seasons. Poor Tyrion has been pretty consistently inept from s6 onwards, and it doesn’t change here. Reading the room’s hostility to Jon’s bending the knee, he doesn’t let Jon and Dany speak for themselves, but stands up to speak. Him, a Lannister, i.e. a member of the family that were a huge part of why the North rebelled in the first place. An optics misread as bad as “It’s not important.”

(10:15) Possibly also the wrong way to bring up the fact that the Lannisters are expected.

(10:34) Back to the primary way the writers have to show that Sansa is smart. She’s the only one thinking about logistics. Which is a thing people need to think about – in a series that gives half a damn about this sort of thing.

However, Sansa is also bringing this up as part of the dialogue about whether Daenerys should be here, in the North, helping defend it. She is bringing this up in public (rather than taking strips off Jon in private for not thinking the supply chain through). It is clear from her tone and word choice that she is hostile to Daenerys’ forces being there. This is an open political statement as much as it is a logistical question. And they still have to fight off the ice zombies. This character is allowed to have political preferences, it’s better if she has political preferences, but she’s also supposed to be smart! And one of the things she was supposed to have learned in the first half the series was how to play nice in public and pick her moments!

On top of this, continuing to undermine the depiction of Sansa as intelligent, the logistical matters do not impact the story one little bit. Sansa’s objections are lip service to the idea that the army needs to be supplied.

(10:42) Sansa got enough supplies for Winterfell, but didn’t account for additional allies…when she knew her brother was heading out to get allies. Apparently didn’t even think to send over a raven asking whether Dany was getting the Unsullied to pack a bag lunch.

This is not entirely on Sansa. These are deeper communications problems which, to be fair, have been extremely well established. Whether it’s Jon and the army of the Vale, or Arya and the question of a coup, these problems just seem to feature Sansa disproportionately.

(11:04) Another establishing shot that, if linked to something more concretely, would have been an excellent idea – though having seen that Dany’s come with literal wagonloads of dragonglass, we’re also supposed to believe she brought no food?

(12:06) Sansa’s hostility to Daenerys is one of her overwhelming character traits in this episode. Her concern for the supply situation is expressed in hostility to Daenerys. The context for her confrontation with Tyrion is expressed in hostility to Daenerys. Sansa’s mistrust is not contextualised by any sort of historical reference to Rhaegar and Lyanna, nor Aerys’ murder of Rickard and Brandon, as you might expect if that was the actual motivation of the animus. On the contrary, we’ve got dialogue telling us that the mistrust is cultural and respect must be earned, and a chunk of showing us that Northerners are racist, establishing that this is Northern isolationism at work.

Whereas our establishing moment for Dany this episode was meant to show us how eager she was to make a good impression and to be on good terms with the Northerners.

(12:17) The ‘fixing’ of book!Sansa continues, as show!Sansa says that Joffrey’s wedding had its moments. One of the many, many ways the show is lesser than the books is because the books let characters actually differ. Everyone in this series has the exact same emotional reaction to revenge.

(13:09) Sansa gets to some of the wonky plotting behind season seven. Show!Cersei is not trustworthy! There’s no basis for a peace there. Tyrion, of all people, should have known this. Yet he bought it hook, line and sinker. He had to, because otherwise the plot the writers wanted didn’t work. And yet, Sansa calling it out doesn’t make the issue go away. It doesn’t reconcile anything. It just highlights that massive gap between how people talk about Tyrion, and what Tyrion’s actually shown to have achieved. And the plot hole.

(13:34) Here, have a shot of Bran sitting in the courtyard, watching people.

(14:02) A reference to Jon’s resurrection! Which…actually didn’t matter! So basically we’re bringing this up just to bring it up!

(14:10) Damn it’s so much better to see Arya and Jon both emoting!

(15:01) Similarly, as they compare their swords, it’s a nice little moment where we can see these two starting to negotiate a more adult relationship based on common interests and shared knowledge.

(15:17) “She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.” Ow. That hurt. Sansa’s got the same problem as Tyrion, in many ways. We’re told she’s smart and shown that…actually, no, not really. To be fair, nobody in this show is smart anymore, but there are only a few characters where the other characters outright say that they’re smart. The writing’s got to back that up, and it doesn’t.

(15:26) Toot toot, all aboard the Daenerys hate train. Arya hasn’t even interacted with Dany, and yet Arya’s framing her backing up of Sansa and Sansa’s overt hostility to Daenerys as “defending our family.” Again without reference to Aerys or Rhaegar, and with the episode showing lots of Northerners glaring at all the people who came with Daenerys to fight the White Walkers.

How on earth did the writers think this would scan? One party’s shown up with her armies and her dragons ready to put herself and her ambitions on the line for the other, and the party getting its fat hauled out of the fire is going ‘ugh, fine, we’ll put up with you if we have to’. Dany’s not just going “I am Targaryen, bow to me,” here. This is a bit of a change from her father. She demonstrates that just by showing up.

(15:41) Capped off with a seriously nasty exchange. “I’m [Sansa’s] family too.” “Don’t forget that.” Just  – gross. What the fuck. Ups the framing as Jon’s love for Daenerys as something inherently anti-Stark. It’s so mean-spirited. Isntead of “you look happy, Jon” or  “do you love her, Jon?”  it’s “remember we come first, Jon.”

(16:33) Here we see the Golden Company. Not that they’re going to be playing a part in events. They’re just there to make up the numbers. Literally.

(16:38) Scene with Euron and Yara starts here. We establish that Yara is still alive.

(16:56) A second eunuch joke! Every bit as charming as the first.

(17:36) If Euron’s side loses, he’ll sail somewhere else. New information! Not in the realms of mind-bendingly plot twistingly important information, but at least it tells us a bit about Euron’s character.

(18:00) And end scene with Euron and Yara. Nothing was accomplished there that could not have been accomplished with an establishing shot of Yara tied up on one of Euron’s ships. The writers continue to use their screentime well.

(18:40) The number of troops Cersei hired, the number of horses they came with, and the lack of elephants would mean more if the show paid attention to detail. And, when Dany has dragons, it’s this sort of detail that might actually help build tension and give uncertainty as to the outcome in a conflict between the two. As things stand, this scene could just be “did you bring soldiers?” “Yes, many soldiers!” for exactly the same plot effect.

We’re long past the days where the show discussed the drawbacks of armour, and past the days where Robert analysed the strengths of the Dothraki in the field. We occasionally still get some great showing of the Dothraki, and for all it totally didn’t belong in the setting and required significant dumbassery on the protagonists’ part, the shield wall Ramsay used in the Battle of the Bastards got the effectiveness of the tactic across. This is just…making up the numbers.

(19:03) You know, one of the most devastating scenes in Cersei’s AFFC plot is where she has sex with Osney Kettleblack, not because she wants to (on the contrary, he reminds her of Robert), but because she feels it’s the only way she can keep him as a political tool. It’s tawdry and risky and emphasises how Cersei’s political method of operating actually reduces her agency.

This scene has some of that feeling to it, but without the book-long context examining what she can and can’t do, and how Cersei’s character and deep internalised misogyny affect her capacity to govern. Here, this scene of Euron pressuring Cersei into sex was preceded by a scene showing his feelings on the situation – a feeling remarkably reminiscent of Robert’s “making the eight” back in season one – rather than something like what we got in AFFC, which is about Cersei’sattitude to this sex she doesn’t want. It doesn’t provoke as much thought, and leaves me at least with just a thoroughgoing feeling of ick.

If there is any saving grace here, it’s Lena Headey, who actually has some acting to do.

(20:50) Oh joy, it’s Bronn. Who’s here for the fanservice. More than one sort of fanservice.

(21:14) Not keen on this, either. Here these characters mention how Ed Sheeran’s cameo character came back with his face burned off. It’s like a more throwaway version of how the Sand Snakes died gruesome deaths last season – this character irritated you? Enjoy their horrible demise! We meant to do it!

(22:45)  Now we get down to the meat of the scene. Cersei sends Bronn to assassinate Jaime and Tyrion. Now that we’ve seen the season, we know that this is absolutely pointless. Bronn does not assassinate Jaime or Tyrion. He doesn’t affect their behaviour in the slightest. Tyrion offers Bronn a good bribe, Bronn accepts despite having been screwed over by the Lannisters before, and everyone goes on their merry way. This character has nothing to do. He does not illustrate any  aspect of the world this story takes place in. He does not undergo any sort of internal journey. He has no reason to be in this story. He’s just here for the fanservice.

(24:32) One thing I do like about the scripting of the scene, combined with Lena Headey’s acting, is that it is crystal clear that Cersei did not enjoy the sex. Euron is obviously fishing for compliments and outright asking  for favourable comparisons to Cersei’s previous lovers, and Cersei phrases things so that Euron can read in favourable comparisons if he likes – but she doesn’t have to say it.

If only this was linked to some sort of ongoing thread about how a female political figure’s use of sex can be counterproductive politically and extremely emotionally damaging.

(24:48) “I’m going to put a prince in your belly.” It’s a double whammy for “the show has no sense of timeline.” One, please don’t draw attention to the fact that Cersei discovered she was pregnant who knows how long ago, and is somehow not showing. Two, Cersei should be 42 or 43! No, it’s not impossible that she’d still be able to have a child, but it’s said so freaking casually, like a woman of 42 or 43 in this medieval-like setting with pretty rudimentary medical care having a baby is no big deal. It’s not treated as unlikely, much less like a potentially serious risk to Cersei’s health and wellbeing. Not to mention the fact that Cersei had three children, and all three are dead – what’s her emotional reaction to a comment like that? That seems like it might strike a nerve, if the showrunners were thinking carefully about what Cersei experienced over the course of the series.

(25:07) Shot of Euron’s ship starts here.

(26:21) And the Greyjoy siblings are free and clear within ninety seconds. At least the writers didn’t waste much of our time, though on the whole this subplot has involved a lot of kicking Theon around the plot like a hackey sack, and a lot of putting Yara in storyline time out.

(27:02) Theon’s kicked over to a new plot once more, for old time’s sake.

(27:42) Another establishing shot of activity around Winterfell I like a lot.

(28:02) In the same vein of the writers forgetting that Cersei is expecting a fourth child late in life, having seen three children make it past the infant mortality stage only to die violently, the writers continue to forget that Tyrion gave the order that resulted in the death of Davos’ only son. We know Davos knows this, but giving Davos an emotional reaction would be too much like work. Plus it might impair the quipping.

(28:29) “You want their loyalty? You have to earn it.” We’re back to the characterisation of the Northerners as loyal, now that it’s convenient. And as we’ll see later, no, Dany cannot earn the loyalty of the Northerners no matter what she does.

(28:46) Finally! Someone brings it up! Dany isn’t spoken for, Jon isn’t spoken for, they can actually stand each other and work together, the match would take the edge off that ‘bend the knee’ thing and turn it into something closer to ‘partnership’, if they have children there’s the benefits of a ruler whose father was from the North – the advantages to Dany’s cause and Jon’s current political position are pretty obvious in this feudal society where marriage is an important tool in creating and maintaining political relationships!

(29:06) aaaaaaand it’s brushed off immediately because apparently Jon and Dany don’t want to listen to lonely old men? What? That is a bad reason for not approaching them and saying ‘hey guys, we’ve had this idea, we think it’s a good one.’

Not that anything’s stopping Jon and Dany themselves from thinking of it.

(29:28) Or is the real reason that Varys thinks that “nothing lasts”? That’s also a rubbish reason. His cyncism is poison, here, because it’s stopping him from making a move to strengthen Dany’s political standing. But never mind that, let’s just take that as a (thus far unfounded) indication that this is going to be a tragic romance.

(30:01) Dany points out that Sansa’s lack of respect is a genuine political issue.

(30:17) The fact that the dragons ate eighteen goats and eleven sheep, and Dany considers that to be barely eating does get across the fact that the dragons consume a lot in the way of resources. Unfortunately, lack of resources is never going to become a material issue.

(30:32) I like that we see the dragons have melted the snow cover.

(30:58) This is…not the best green screen work. Try to ignore it.

(31:02) “Go on.” Dany invites Jon up on one of her dragons. Just like that. This entire sequence is so anti-climactic. There’s no joy in Dany finding new family here, no thrill as Jon explores a new identity of his own. This is not any sort of culmination. This is a man riding on a dragon because that is a cool thing, without much thought as to why in-story dragons and dragonriders are special. It’s got all the narrative weight of Dany offering Jon a ride in her Ferrari – special, yes, but not in any way transcendent or emotionally significant.

(31:17) Especially as Jon’s hesitance to hop aboard is played as a joke.

(31:53) What this scene does have that I was asking for all last season was Jon and Daenerys enjoying each other’s company. They’re smiling, there’s some banter.

(33:54) “We could stay a thousand years.” This call-back to Jon’s romance with Ygritte would be a lot more meaningful if Jon didn’t kill Dany at the end of the season. Oh no, how tragic, how star crossed, their romance ended with Jon murdering her.

(34:41) Simiarly, the significant looks between Drogon and Jon just make me queasy after the finale. I have not rewatched earlier seasons after the finale. There was a time not all that long ago when I loved Game of Thrones, especially those earlier seasons. But this is the last time I’m going to be watching this show. And Lindsay Ellis was absolutely right that knowledge of a story’s ending shouldn’t ruin the experience of the story when you come back to it.

(35:07) Again, decent showing of preparations for the fight.

(35:17) “You know who makes weapons for the wildlings? Cripples and cocksuckers. Which one are you?” What a burn on Gendry. The Hound is likeable because he’s sassy, and he’s sassy because his jokes involve ableism and homophobia.

There is a difference between writing ableist and homophobic characters as part of an ableist and homophobic setting, and writing ableist and homophobic jokes as a reason we should feel good about characters.

(36:04) Man, Arya suffers almost as much as Bran and earlier-season Dany for being instructed to be emotionless. Think about it. If we were seeing this without the context of season two and three, would we be shipping it? Or would we be staring at our screens in befuddlement at the lack of chemistry? On Maisie Williams’ part, which has nothing to do with her acting ability (because as we have ample evidence in this show, she can act) and everything to do with the horrible, horrible idea percolating through this show that for the characters to show that they have toughened up and become strong people, they must be stoic.

(36:33) There we go! Arya cracks a smile, and instantly the interactions between these characters actually feel more natural.

(37:35) Now we’re back to showing the Northerners as disloyal.

(37:50) Here’s the setting for Jon and Sansa to actually have it out. In private. Where she can speak freely, as she does, about not cluing her in. Note, however, that this is the third instance this episode where Sansa’s going ‘ugh, Daenerys, I don’t like her’ either implicitly or explicitly.

Not helped in the least by the extra-textual comments that Sansa’s jealous of how pretty Dany is.

(38:15) But when it comes right down to it, Jon is right – everyone here needs Dany, her armies and her dragons both, and securing her assistance was not an optional perk. Sansa’s right that Jon went about it in a suboptimal way, both because show!Jon is written not that bright and because plot contrivance, but she’s real short on viable options to defeat the White Walkers.

(38:48) I have faith in you, Sansa says…then turns around and suggests that Jon only likes Dany because she’s pretty. Show!Sansa has not been treated well by the script at any point. In earlier seasons she was considerably less savvy than her book counterpart, and now she’s become ruthless and manipulative and often plain mean. (We were also supposed to believe she was undermining Jon in season seven, but that plot didn’t actually show that.)

(38:59) “Did you bend the knee to save the North, or because you love her?” And cut. I’ll get back to this issue next episode, because it’s a lot more prominent next episode with much more significant effects on the storytelling, but yeah, get used to the show posing questions to its characters and not bothering to answer them.

(39:37) Ah, a reminder of last season’s greyscale subplot. Criticise the maesters for not listening to pleas for help from the north, sure, but regarding greyscale…yeah, damn those maesters for forbidding a dangerous medical procedure that might save one patient, but only at great risk to the doctor (and any assistants, presumably) and thereby continue the spread of the disease. Those cowards.

(40:15) The Valyrian steel sword that’s been in Sam’s family for generations would have been his anyway, eventually. I see, I see. The writers kinda forgot about the Night’s Watch and their vows. Also, gross, I do hate this anti-Sam who’s so proud of having taken Heartsbane from his father.

(40:39) Bailed out by John Bradley’s acting. Bradley’s been great when it comes to depicting Sam’s mixed feelings about his abusive father. Get some lights in this scene so we can see John Bradley’s acting better!

(41:57) More wonderful shots of Bran waiting in the courtyard. Not showing any sort of emotion though.

(42:19) “It’s time to tell Jon the truth,” Bran says. No emotion there, either. Bran’s got nothing at the prospect of revealing one of the most explosive political secrets in Westerosi history, nothing at upending his brother’s sense of identity, and nothing over the complete reevaluation of Ned Stark that this information calls for. Nothing.

And again, we know this isn’t a problem with Isaac Hempstead-Wright’s acting, because of evidence provided to us earlier in the series.

(42:26) “I’m not his brother,” Bran says, completely without emotion. What is wrong with this direction? What is wrong with the writing for this character?

(42:45) I nevertheless like that the Starks head down to the crypts to pay their respects on a regular basis. That does show their love for Ned. What I wouldn’t have given to see the Stark siblings discussing Robb or Catelyn.

(43:32) More good writing, which I will take where I can get in season eight – Jon notices immediately that Sam’s upset and asks about Sam’s girlfriend and their son. Not only does this show that Jon knows the things that might be upsetting Sam, it lets the writers just briefly clue us in that Gilly and baby Sam are present and okay, just offscreen.

(43:55) Back to bad writing. Sam is understandably preoccupied with the fact that Dany exected his father and brother. What I don’t get is why Sam treats Dany’s failure to tell Jon as significant. Dany apparently has no idea that Jon and Sam are friends. From the way she greeted Sam in that previous scene, it looks like she only knows of Sam through Jorah.  If Dany concealed her actions from Jon out of shame, that’s contradicted by the fact she told Sam the truth. (Nor is it consistent with various other actions she’s taken.) If Dany just didn’t give a thorough account of her actions on the field to Jon, and the Tarlys should have been included as significant casualties, that failing is shared by a whole bunch of people who could have told Jon, and isn’t any sort of personal insult.

(44:29) It’s time! The R+L=J reveal we’ve been waiting for! It’s been a rocky journey, between the lack of early foreshadowing, the really obvious foreshadowing later, that misstep where people thought E+L=J, Lannister style, and HBO had to correct people, and most recently the very obvious setup for Sam to tell Jon this news in the worst way possible, for the worst reasons possible (not a bad idea, just shakier execution). But who cares, we’re here. This is going to have some impact.

(45:15) Okay, well, impact kind of blunted by the fact I can’t actually see much in this scene. Some lights, please?

(45:46) Finally! Someone reacts to what this meant! Yes, this is some drama, this is going to take some time and some fraught conversations to work through.

(46:24) And straight away we focus on what this means for the current fights over the Iron Throne. Blast. Jon bypasses denial, anger, bargaining and depression and gets straight to acceptance and dealing with the consequences of the reveal. There’s no “that can’t be true,” there’s no “why did you tell me this.” Luke Skywalker had the fucking Force confirming the parentage reveal and even then he didn’t accept it as easily as Jon does now.

(46:35) “You gave up your crown to save your people. Would she do the same?” Except that’s not the question that the reveal of Jon’s parentage poses. Jon gave up his crown in trade for an alliance against a pressing military threat. What would Dany be saving people from, in abdicating in favour of Jon? Someone’s got to actually start a civil war over this for her to save people from that threat.

(46:42) In case you can’t see the scene, it involves Tormund and Beric investigating a castle that’s clearly been attacked.

(48:41) Just shy of two minutes before something was said, and even then it was screaming. That was a long time to squint at people walking through a scene so dark it’s hard to tell what they were reacting to. I need something to either listen to or watch, here.

(48:43) And Beric lights the scene as he and Tormund ambush some Night’s Watch refugees led by Dolorous Edd.

(49:30) So that’s Lord Umber dead. Which means presumably that we’re in Last Hearth right now. Establishing that Tormund, Beric and Edd will be coming back to Winterfell, blah blah, not sure that was worth two minutes of screentime when they could have just shown up and said “we passed Last Hearth and everyone was dead,” given the other plot points we could spend screentime on.

(49:49) It’s a good jump scare though.

(50:40) A mysterious hooded figure rides into Winterfell amongst a crowd of people also riding into Winterfell.

(51:09!) It’s Jaime! He looks around Winterfell’s courtyard.

(51:26) And spots Bran watching him. End episode on the held gaze. While Bran sitting in the courtyard waiting for Jaime is actually really funny, I do think this pretty much worked, setting up the idea that Jaime’s going to have to confront the attempted child murder from episode 1. It’s also a reminder of the conflict that’s involved with working with the Lannisters on that more personal level.

Next time – possibly the season’s best episode, and boy is that depressing.

#anti got #fine toothed comb edition #season eight

[danwhobrowses]

10 Things that would’ve Improved the Game of Thrones Final Season (For Me)

So it came to my attention that recently it was the First Anniversary of the Final Episode of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’. I was taken back to my memory of the BinGOT thing we had at work where we all made predictions of who lived, died and ‘won’ from the last ep (I was in 2nd or 3rd place). And since my mother has started binging it during quarantine I thought in the spirit of that environment I’d discuss a little what I would’ve changed in the final season.

Spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8 Below, if you haven’t watched it then you’re better off not reading this frankly, if you haven’t been spoiled already at least.

So for starters, the final episode is not the worst tv I’ve ever seen, it just was a sloppy final season in general that really didn’t satisfy the 2 years of hype waiting for it, it’s like with the How I Met Your Mother finale, but that annoyance being more than one episode. But without further ado here are 10 things I would’ve changed about the final season Note: Most will involve the finale. The first 2 episodes were great.

10 - Ten Episodes The Long Night was 1 episode, the LONG NIGHT. A Culmination of the army of living and dead confined into one episode. One of the main problems with the final season was that the pacing was a bit rushed, it made character progression seem unnatural and dropped long-built plot points like water through a sieve. With 10 episodes, which was not a big ask given that this was the usual number and the gravitas of it being the final season would easily allow it to be green lit. D&D immediately backed themselves into a corner by giving a limit they weren’t used to and too much content to put in.

9 - Bite of the Spider Varys’ death was an upsetting start of the penultimate episode, while I would’ve loved him to have survived start to end and potentially ended on top (because he’s never shown to be as cunning or dangerous as he is in the books) there was some sense in him dying. However, Varys was shown sending a letter before his arrest and that never came back up, the finale could’ve used this by revealing to the public Jon’s true heritage, which would’ve immediately undermined Dany’s claim and set up a better conflict. Also we never knew what the voice in the flames said to him...

8 - A More Fitting Long Night While everyone probably popped hard for Arya killing the Night King, myself included, the nature of it was rather abrupt. I don’t think anyone can buy that she sneaked past that entire army. I do feel like the Night King was just a MacGuffin for the Long Night, given that he did so little in the actual fight. This is where a multi-part Long Night would’ve been key as well, going from the Night King being immune to Dragonfire to dying a bit later was not a good pace, and we lacked any conflict with Jon like we teased twice, Arya probably wasn’t the most poetic person to kill him either but GoT seldom did poetic deaths (Joffrey, Cersei, Euron). While the Long Night had exemplary deaths like Theon, Lyanna, Jorah and Beric, the Night King fell among the ranks of Melisandre and Edd in terms of meh deaths. The Long Night should’ve been a bigger bloodbath than it was, half the Dothraki somehow survived remember, we didn’t get to see Ghost fight at all either, no giant spiders, a lot of the tension was lost with the way some fight scenes were filmed; it was too easy to read between the lines and not enough characters had any true ‘oh god this person could die’ scenes.

7 - Resolution for the Characters we didn’t See and Plots unresolved With so much funding and finality in the show, there felt like there could’ve been more stuff that could’ve been resolved; what was the Quaith’s prophecy about? What really happened with the Doom of Valyria? Why does Dragonglass and Valyrian steel kill White Walkers? What is Daario doing after Dany died? Were the Faceless Men really that okay with letting Arya wander around knowing their skillset? Nobody hired them to help in the war either. What happened to the remnants of that warlock dude who stole the baby dragons, they sent one scorpion and that’s it, what happens with the Little Birds now that they’re leaderless? Who was Azor Ahai? What were the spirals about? There are a lot of questions the show kinda just, ignored. 

6 - The Mad Queen So, Dany going from ‘I’ll stop if they surrender’ to ‘Burn them fucking all’ was abrupt for many, the majority of fans were not ready or willing to accept turning on their Kaleesi in just one episode. While I could see the conclusion coming from being jumped, losing another ‘child’ and her closest friend as well as her new boyfriend being her nephew and a legitimate threat to her legitimacy despite already pledging fealty, Dany’s descent could’ve used more time, and less naivety.  While the death of the dragon was a huge shock, the idiocy fell on Dany in thinking that Cersei would play fair and wouldn’t try to occupy Dragonstone while she abandoned it. There also fell inconsistency when the same fleet and rows of Scorpion crossbows suddenly got Stormtrooper aim during ‘The Bells’. Euron is a renowned sailor, he ruined a Dornish fleet in a previous season, he may be an annoying bastard but you have to treat his naval tactics with a bit more respect - and make Dany less stupid with Cersei doing Cersei things. A lot of people definitely needed more time in buying the idea that Dany had lost her cool and that she blamed all of Westeros to justify burning everyone unashamedly.

5 - Proper Redemption We all know who we’re talking about. Jaime, Jaime, Jaime. In the end he just proved Olenna’s point didn’t he? And his turn away from redemption was only to serve as an example point for Tyrion to use to convince Jon to kill Dany. Jaime didn’t have to live, but he didn’t have to die rushing to Cersei’s rescue, or even due to Euron stabbing him. If anything Jaime should’ve died with some Honour, to be the inverse of Ned as he was presented in Season 1.

4 - My Lady does not have to mean M’Lady This is probably the most selfish ones of my 10 but as a shipper at my very heart and soul I wanted one, at least one, ship to survive this entire turmoil and Gendry and Arya were that couple. We almost had it as well, but then for some mad reason D&D decided that Gendry, despite literally saying that “none of it will be worthwhile if you’re not with me”, stayed in Storm’s End. Arya’s character endgame was right in her venturing off not being bound by the fact that she’s a noble, but Gendry spent a lot of time not caring that he was of Kingsblood to basically being his Father’s son. He’ll rule Storm’s End, marry some woman to have kids, but he’ll still have fallen into the same pit as King Robert did. It would’ve been much more satisfying and hopeful if Gendry abandoned the titles and land he never wanted or needed to accompany someone he loves and who loves him back on an adventure into the unknown. She’s not a ‘lady’ if she’s only marrying a blacksmith and love is the death of duty.

3 - Sansa is NOT Smart (and gets what she actually deserves) Right. So I really, really didn’t like Sansa. Like, I get it, she got held hostage by the Lannisters, watched her father get beheaded, got accused of murder, learned that her brother and mother died, watched the guy who fancied her mother and kissed her kill her aunt and then got effectively sold to an abuser in an arranged marriage. But Sansa is not the smartest player in the game, it was annoying that they tried to portray her as one, she had one idea that anyone could’ve told you ‘don’t be stupid against Ramsay Bolton’. She spent all of Season 8 mainly giving side eye like a petty bitch, completely trying to undermine Dany despite the two being very very similar (remember Dany was raped, sold off in an arranged marriage and watched family members get killed too) to the point where she was conspiring for Jon to usurp her. And in reality she took her ball and left, she was so pissy that the leaders didn’t pick her to be Queen of Westeros that she literally pointed out her own brother’s infertility, claimed that the North wouldn’t bow to a monarch, then declared herself Queen.  Hide the ‘Yas Queen’ goggles for a sec, this wasn’t empowering she was throwing her own brother under the bus because she wanted to be queen, and she learned far too much from Littlefinger and Cersei’s playbook to actually be a just one. The North is allowed to be an independent nation, but Sansa’s ‘victory’ was more earned by virtue of a lot of shit happened to her than her actually demonstrating qualities to be queen.

2 - Bran Stark can’t come to the Phone right now... While we’re on the subject of Stark children not being fit rulers, Bran. What a cockamamie decision that was. I was 100% behind the destruction of the Iron Throne, but the chorus of laughter with a democratic rule was a bit of a slap in the face. Of all the choices though, Bran had to be near the bottom, it felt completely unearned that he spent literal seasons disconnecting from the world even to the point where he told Meera and Sam that Bran Stark is no longer here anymore only for Bran Stark to magically resurface when a crown is in waiting. I think it defeats the whole Three Eyed Raven thing too, the guy isn’t really one for the people, which is the problem every other ruler before him failed at. If you can’t pick a just person to lead, then why not a council instead? Just using Bran was a poor and messy decision.

1 - THE MOTHERFUCKING VALONQUAR One of the few expectations across all of Game of Thrones was the wondering over whether Cersei was gonna get what’s coming to her, the Maggy the Frog prophecy was going along quite well up until the Valonquar bit, where the younger sibling that was going to choke the life out of her was: bricks. BRICKS! Of all the long-winded prophecy foreshadowings to drop this one was the worst, Cersei (and Jaime) died in underwhelming, thoughtless fashion, the lack of fanfare on killing off one of the best and most ‘love to hate’ villains in the show only cemented the fact that the finale was not able to live up to the hype. True, most of these are small changes, but it’s worth remembering that there was some good coming out of the final season and it was the lack of those little things and attention to detail that led to the season ending on an underwhelming note.

We did however get a good ton of memes out of it, and at work a long-winded discussion on who should get the ‘winner’ 5-points (compared to the 1 correct points) since we had technically agreed that the 5 points goes to “whoever correctly guesses who sits on the Iron Throne” XD I still can’t believe I was right in Drogon melting the throne though that was one in a million

#game of thrones #got #got season finale #got season 8 #cersei #jaime lannister #lannister #stark #arya stark #sansa stark #bran stark #jon snow #daenerys targaryen #varys #westeros #the long night #night king #white walkers #valonquar #gendry

[annes-andromeda]

Fluffers Speaks

Part two of my Jonerys rant cause I’m bored and have a lot of thoughts. Bear with me, cause I get sidetracked at some points. And prepare yourselves cause this is long and I get pissed.

—————————————————————

So in my last post, I talked about the problems with Jonerys in Season 7. Now we go onto Season 8. And we all know how much of a train reck that was.

In Season 8, Jonerys seems to take a toll for the worst and turns from a relationship void of chemistry or logic to Jaime and Cersei 2.0. Or more controversially, Aerys and Rhaella 2.0. I’ll get to that later.

When the Season starts, the ship seems to be having problems already (I know, shocker). As soon as Daenerys arrives to Winterfell, the Northerners do not take a liking to her. I’ve heard Dany stans on Tumblr and Instagram say that the Northerners are Xenophobic, racist, and other foul names.

Now what do xenophobia and racism mean? Simple:

Xenophobia: dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries

Racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.

When in the entire season did we see the Northerners say they didn’t like the Unsullied or Dothraki because of the color of their skin? Never. When have they said they don’t like the Unsullied or Dothraki because of where they come from? Never. The Northerners have good reason not to like them. The Unsullied are mindless soldiers who take orders without question, and the Dothraki pillage, rape, and murder for sport.

But back to Jonerys. Daenerys doesn’t seem to give the Northerners a good reason to trust her. She openly says that her dragons eat “Whatever they like”, which I guarantee makes the Northerners not trust her even more. And not to mention, the Northerners haven’t forgotten what her father did to Brandon and Rickard Stark. The North Remembers.

I’ve heard Stans say that the Northerners should be grateful for Daenerys coming North to help them. I disagree.

What are two of Dany’s titles again?

Queen of the Andals and the First Men

AND

PROTECTOR OF THE REALM

It is her job. If she proclaims herself as the “Rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms”, then it is her duty to resolve any threat that should come to her self proclaimed “people”. It’s like in real life: don’t expect people to be grateful to you every time you do something nice for them. Especially when you’re just doing your job.

Not only that, but Daenerys openly threatens Sansa twice. Once with the “Whatever they like” line about her dragons, and the other to Jon’s face when she says “If she can’t respect me-“. Jon doesn’t even confront her about it, he just lets his slide.

If he loves his family so much, why doesn’t he defend them? Cause this isn’t the Jon Snow we know and love. This is Jon “you are my queen” Snow who is just Dany’s lap dog and a mouthpiece for stans.

Cut to episode four, where the Long Night is over and the Northerners are celebrating. Daenerys visits Jon in his room (without knocking might I add. Manners, Daenerys, manners) and asks “Are you drunk?”. Jon stumbles on his own two feet, clearly indicating that he’s drunk. After talking about Jorah and Daenerys saying that she couldn’t love him the way she loves Jon, they make out.

Why did she have to make out with him while he was drunk? It just bothered me cause Jon couldn’t refuse cause of all the alcohol. Thankfully, Jon spares me another terrible boatsex scene and remembers “Oh yeah, she’s my aunt and incest is gross”.

Daenerys then confessed that she didn’t enjoy the way people looked at Jon with such love and admiration because she never had that in the North (similarly to how Viserys was jealous of Daenerys when she got the love and praise of the Dothraki). When Jon says he doesn’t want it (another line he repeats throughout the series), she literally shouts:

“It doesn’t matter what you want!”

What a great girlfriend, am I right? Putting her own needs over her lovers and not giving a damn about his feelings. True love😒

But seriously, this whole scene just made me hate this ship even more. Daenerys outright says that her and Jon can only be together if he lies to his family and swears Bran and Sam to secrecy. She literally begs him and even fake cries to him. I know it’s fake crying, cause as soon as Jon says that he’s still gonna tell his family, Daenerys drops the pity tears and gets angry at him.

Even when he kneels in front of her and she grabs his face forcefully, it just shows the power imbalance between them. Daenerys is always above Jon, and Jon is always below Daenerys. Jaime and Brienne also did the face holding thing, but they were on the same level. They were looking directly at each other. If anything the Jonerys face hold should be compared to Cersei and Euron, when Euron kneels in front of Cersei and submits to her.

See the difference?

Now, I get into why Jonerys is like Aerys and Rhaella 2.0. Obviously, Jonerys is basically Lannicest 2.0, where one person has more power over the other, but it’s also like the Mad King and his sister-wife.

After Daenerys burns Varys (which sucked because there’s no way Varys would’ve died that easily. Thanks Tyrion😒), she talks to Jon. She says that Sansa is just as guilty of Varys’s death as she is.

Sansa literally had nothing to do with Varys’s death. She wasn’t the one who passed the sentence. Sansa only gave Tyrion valuable information cause she believed that Jon was the better ruler with the rightful claim.

Anyways, Daenerys goes onto say that she doesn’t have love in Westeros, only fear (which is true). Jon then says that he loves her, which just sounds sooo forced. Like even his face said “Oh god, why do I have to say this?” Daenaerys confronts him saying “Is that all I am to you? Your Queen?”

It then leads to the most disturbing Jonerys kiss scene I’ve ever seen. I can’t put into words just how disgusted I was

Look at him. My poor boy with this demon (no offense Daenerys. I love you but you were awful this season). He literally closes his eyes as if to say “Just let it happen Jon and it’ll be over quicker”

And take a look at this:

Jon’s just standing there letting it happen, while Daenerys waits for him to make the first move. But he doesn’t because he’s afraid of her. This is the episode where D&D claims that Jon doesn’t love Daenerys, which for me I was like:

And then they completely forgot about that and I was upset again.

Now you might be asking: how is Jonerys like Aerys and Rhaella? Well to clarify, I’m not saying their entire relationship as a whole is like that, but this particular scene reminded me of them.

Take a look at this excerpt from A Feast For Crows:

Whenever Aerys would burn somebody, he’d go to Rhaella and “take his pleasure”. And when Daenerys burned Varys, she tries to make love to Jon, which he backs off from.

Daenerys then says “Let it be fear”, almost like saying “Alright. See what happens when you reject me”. What a healthy relationship, am I right?😒

And then finally, the finale. God, this pissed me off. Why did Emilia Clarke think it was a good idea to make Daenerys giddy after she literally burned thousands of people? It just made her look truly insane. Emilia, sweety, I love you. I really do. But please don’t come and say that Jon killed Daenerys because “he hates women”. Believe me, Jon is FAR from a woman hater. And apparently he didn’t talk to her? Jon literally tried to convince Dany to ”make them understand”, but he failed.

At first when Jon yelled to Daenerys saying that she burned children alive, I was like:

I thought “Finally! I’m getting my boy back! He still has sanity left in him!” But then he had to hit me with the “You are my Queen, now and always” and I was like:

Like, they did that. They destroyed my boy and everything he stood for. They made him a mouthpiece for Dany stans and Reek 2.0. The finale was bad enough, but Jesus Christ, this broke me.

—————————————————————

Well, that was a journey. Thankfully the show is over and I can focus on my AU and not worry about leaks. I knew the finale was gonna be bad cause I read the leaks, but it’s truly something else when you experience it.

If you want me to post my version of Jon and Daenerys from “Cookies”, let me know. Or not, I’ll probably do it anyways😅

But until then, the tea has been spilled and the pot has been stirred

#game of thrones #my thoughts #fluffers speaks #anti jon x dany #anti jonerys #anti daenerys #stans dont interact #dont want melted snowflakes on my dash

[rainhadaenerys]

Hi there, I just started following you so sorry if you've already answered my questions (haven't had time to mass stalk your blog yet). Firstly, I've been reading other ASOIAF blogs and a few of them seem to predict that Dany will accidentally activate the wildfire and burn down Kings Landing but I think if it were to happen wouldn't Cersei make more sense since she was so fascinated by it. What do you think? Also everyone seems to think Dany will die at the end by sacrificing herself (1/2)

since she's a messiah figure along with Jon but won't that just mean that the two prominent leadership arcs we've been following will go drown the drain? Thoughts? And if they do die what would have been the point of their marriage? I mean I know they'll get married because they genuinely love each other but it's not like either of them have a problem having a relationship outside of marriage if you know understand what I'm getting at. (2/2)

About the wildfire: yes, it makes much more sense if it was Cersei. GRRM has actually given us foreshadowing that Cersei will do something with wildfire. See this meta. With Dany, there’s actually no foreshadowing for this at all. The most anyone could claim as foreshadowing is this quote:

The thought of home disquieted her. If her sun-and-stars had lived, he would have led his khalasar across the poison water and swept away her enemies, but his strength had left the world. Her bloodriders remained, sworn to her for life and skilled in slaughter, but only in the ways of the horselords. The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them. Dany had no wish to reduce King's Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

But before she could do that she must conquer. - Daenerys II ACOK

So maybe, while conquering Westeros, Dany accidentally sets off the wildfire, turning King’s Landing into exactly what she didn’t want. Some people actually think this would be important for Dany to face the truth about her father, but honestly… what’s really the point here? To condemn Dany for using violence? But why only Dany? Why is it that the narrative doesn’t condemn everyone else’s violence? Why is it that the only character the narrative condemns for their violence is the character who has the most revolutionary beliefs in the story? Why is it that Dany ends up accidentally doing the worst thing that anyone else has done in the series, even though Dany is probably the only character that constantly questions the use of violence (like, seriously, other characters don’t even think about the consequences of war, they just go to war and that’s it. Dany is the only one that is constantly questioning it)? Why is it that Dany’s biggest parallel, Jon Snow, doesn’t end up doing something as bad as this? Why is it that both main female rulers in the story are bad in some way (Cersei because she’s evil, Dany because she will do something terrible by accident), while the two main male rulers (Jon and Tyrion) look better by comparison? Does GRRM really not see how he’s writing a sexist narrative if that’s how things are going? Even if Dany is not a villain, even if she burns King’s Landing by accident, it’s still very sexist to portray both his main female rulers as worse than your main male rulers.

So like… I don’t know. I think it’s a terrible decision for the story, and I don’t see nearly as much foreshadowing for Dany blowing up King’s Landing as there is for Cersei. I guess it’s possible that the foreshadowing for Cersei could still come true if she tries to burn King’s Landing with wildfire but doesn’t succeed, and then Dany comes and sets off the wildfire later. But I still think this would be really bad for the story, and it would have terrible implications. And there are still many things that will happen before Dany even comes to Westeros: Cersei vs Aegon, Euron coming to Westeros with Dany’s stolen dragons… with all these things that need to happen, why is the fandom so certain it will be Dany? Why is it that everyone thinks it has to be Dany? It doesn’t have to be her. Dany doesn’t need to destroy King’s Landing to realize that the use of violence has limits, she has already been questioning her methods every step of the way. She’s self-critical, she doesn’t need to destroy King’s Landing to “wake up” from her “dark path”. And she doesn’t need to destroy King’s Landing to decide to fight against the Others. She doesn’t need to destroy King’s Landing to realize that saving the realm from ice zombies is important. Honestly… I see really no reason for Dany to be the one that burns King’s Landing.

As for Dany dying, I wrote many rants about this (and I’m also writing another one that I hope to publish soon). I do think it’s a waste of Dany’s political storyline. And it would make Jon and Dany’s marriage pointless (I’m very sure they’ll marry, the House of the Undying spells it out for us), and it would make their baby pointless too (it will happen: x, x). I don’t believe in this notion that Dany’s arc is leading her to “decide to be selfless and sacrifice herself”, because Dany was already selfless from the very beginning. Ending her story with a selfless sacrifice is not an arc, it’s making her character stagnant. And I’m sorry, I really don’t agree with this idea that just because Dany is a “messiah” figure, she has to die. Just because Dany is a messiah type of character, it doesn’t mean that’s what her arc is about (and it isn’t, Dany’s arc is political). Is there a rule or something that says that messiah characters have to die or else it’s not a good story? For a fandom that loves subversions, this fandom is really insistent that GRRM must play all tropes straight when it comes to Dany. Anyway, I will stop for now, because as I said, I have a long rant in my drafts that is exactly about all the reasons why I think Dany dying is a bad idea, so wait for that post. For now, you can take a look at the metas I linked, as well as my #let dany live tag (you can take a look at my other tags as well, the link for them is in the blog description).

#ask #daenerys targaryen #let dany live

[acre1984-blog]

Here are some good alternate endings!

1. Dany and Jon destroy the Throne together, ending the Game of Thrones.

"In short, the story should have been the last two Targaryens in the world finding their way back to each other and destroying the Throne (which was ultimately the downfall of their house) and thus ending the 'game.'

Rheagal should have lived and Dany and Jon should have used their dragons to burn the throne. The wheel would be broken — the throne having been created by dragon fire (and the Targaryens), and then destroyed by dragon fire (and the Targaryens) – bringing the story full circle.

It would have been clever if throughout the whole story we were made to believe that Dany wanted to sit on the Iron Throne when really all she wanted to do was destroy it."

2. Jon kills himself after killing Dany.

"Jon Snow should have died a la Melisandre after Dany (in a sort of Romeo & Juliet type manner) as he had fulfilled the Lord of Light's purpose. Drogon should have taken both of them away."

3. Brienne decides to be with Tormund.

Gendry on that effing boat [with Arya]. Sandor still alive with both his eyes and on the boat with him. I shipped Brienne with Jaime, but since he chose his sister...Brienne getting knighted and then choosing Tormund. Jon, King of the Seven Kingdoms.

Dany would still be dead. Since Mereen, I felt that she was a different person and lost her morals."

4. Bran is actually...the Night King?

"Everything stays the same. The credits roll then go to a cut scene of Bran warging out. The camera zooms in closer and closer until the shot is just Bran’s eyes. He blinks. His eyes flash to Night King blue. The end.

George R. R. Martin trolls all of us. The show's ending is actually the ending to The Winds of Winter. A Song of Spring will be where we are given the true ending."

5. We see where Drogon takes Dany.

"Keeping it as is cuz whatevs, but we actually see where Drogon takes Dany. He lands on a field full of dragon eggs because come on, we really think there were only three dragon eggs left in the world? He puts Dany on the eggs and sets the whole thing on fire. Dany is reborn again, but spends the rest of her days on the other side of the world just chilling."

6. Arya wears Grey Worm's face to kill Dany.

"We watched Arya for TWO GOD DAMN SEASONS learning to become a faceless man and she used it once to kill Walder Frey?!?

Arya should have killed Grey Worm and worn his face to kill Dany. Also, Arya needed a bad ass kill in the finale. That would have put Jon on the throne and Jon could have then exiled Arya so she could sail the world like she wanted."

7. Arya wears Jon's face to kill Dany.

"I wish Jon had realized he wouldn’t be able to kill Dany, so he sacrifices himself so Arya can take his face, get close enough to Dany and kill her. Jon is dead, but he did it to save everyone and still show some love for Dany. Arya would be exiled to go west anyway in my brain. Same general story but with a bit of umph to it, I guess. But I must say I thought it was very good in its simplicity."

8. Dany and Jon rule together.

"I’m such a sucker for happy endings that I really hoped Dany and Jon would just rule together, and because of that Sansa would still have the independent North. I understand the Mad Queen thing probably made for a more interesting plot, but I still hated watching Dany’s downfall considering everything she’d ever been through and coming out even stronger for it. I still hoped for them to rule together or at worst Jon giving up his right to the throne so she could rule on her own. But again, I’m just a sucker for happy endings, so to each their own."

9. Dany kills herself.

"All could be the same until after Danys Speech...Tyrion is sentenced to death by fire. Jon stands in front of Drogon and stops the execution. Tyrion explains to the Army why Jon was able to stop Drogon – because he's the rightful ruler. The army, and Grey Worm bend the knee to Jon. Dany is upset at losing power to Jon, losing the army, and losing power over Drogon, so she kills herself."

10. Bronn isn't on the small council because "that makes literally no sense."

"I don't know how it should have ended but I would personally like to have seen:

Brienne starting the next page of the knight book with her name and the first sentence would be that she's the first female head of the Kingsguard, and she helped form a constitutional monarchy.

Bronn NOT on the small council because that makes literally no sense.

Ending shot of the show should be a shadow of Drogon flying and a faint dragon's cry over some land that we've never seen before.

Sam should have said A Song of Ice and Fire is not yet finished.

Dany's eyes should have turned purple to honour the original writing, and she should have sat on the throne."

11. Bran was actually able to walk all along.

"Honestly I wish it would’ve just ended with Bran standing up and being like 'HAHA GOTCHA I could walk this whole time.'"

12. Brienne is pregnant with Jaime's baby.

"A glimpse of Brienne’s writing should have revealed: 'Fathered a child with Brienne of Tarth.'"

13. Dany melts the throne, then flies away with Drogon. Westeros becomes seven independent nations.

"Dany melts the throne, then her and Drogon fuck off. Jon and Tyrion are held responsible. It's decided that Westeros will be seven independent nations, with Bran serving as the protector. Jon is still banished to the Night's Watch (but we all know he's now King Beyond the Wall).

Final scene is an elderly woman tending to a lemon tree in the yard of a house with a red door. She looks up and smiles as Drogon flies over."

14. Jaime kills Cersei.

"Basically the gists of what I was hoping would go down is:

Jaime kills Cersei (thus fulfilling Maggy's prophecy).

Arya kills Dany (thus fulfilling Melisandre’s prophecy and completing her ‘no one’ arc).

Jon is nominated as King of Westeros (whether he rejects it or not is up to him, but damn his name should really be among the nominees, not because he’s a Targaryen, but because of his credibility).

Sansa remains Queen of the independent North.

If Arya exploring west has to remain the same, then I hope this happens: Gendry eventually realized that he’s not really feeling the ‘Lord’ title anyway and suddenly shows up at the harbor and tells Arya he wants to join her.

The people in the court council remain the same.

Flash forward to coronation day like in the finale, with Jon Snow visiting Castle Black (now no longer a place for the banished, but a middle meeting point for Westerosi and Freefolk to discuss matters when needed) to say hi to old friend Tormund and to pet Ghost."

15. The white walkers are the final enemy, and Jon has defeat them by killing Daenerys.

"I wanted the white walkers to be the final enemy and hoped for a more literal re-telling of the Last Hero/Prince story that was promised. Basically the winter is getting worse and people are losing the fight. The hero (Jon) tragically puts his sword through his lover (Daenerys) to create the weapon that drives the Others back where they came from and ends the winter... At least for the next couple thousand years. Jon, wounded and having nothing left to lose, is last seen chasing the remaining enemy way beyond the wall, knowing he won't make it back."

16. Sansa is queen of the seven kingdoms.

"I wish Arya was the one that killed Dany, but Jon still refuses the throne, and Sansa ends up on the throne of the seven kingdoms. She’s so level-headed and would’ve been so much better than Bran. And I wish Arya ended up with Gendry so that at least one couple could have a happy ending. But seriously, anyone but Bran."

17. Gendry becomes king.

"Should have been Gendry. Do you know how much fanfiction I'm going to have to read to make up for this?"

18. Dany gets killed, then is brought back to life, then kills everyone...again?

"Tyrion is killed by Dany for betraying her. Arya kills Dany. Drogon takes Dany to a wizard that brings her back to life, and comes back and torches everyone again to take back the Iron Throne."

#jonerys #daenerys targaryen #jon snow

[cecewarlock]

Thoughts on episode 8x05

English is not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes.

Danny: The execution of Daenerys the Mad Queen was horrible. I do not buy into the whole “If you had paid attention to this show you would have seen it coming” because the way that she turned “mad” didn’t make any sense. Daenerys has never shown intentions to hurt innocent people. She does have a terrible temper and violent tendencies, but they were always directed to people she thought were bad: The slave masters, the Lannister army, etc. If you believe that when he killed the Tarlys she was being the mad queen, you should also believe that when Jon Snow executed a kid for treason, he was also going mad. Ned Stark executed a deserter of the night’s watch (who was right all along btw) and I don’t think anyone is claiming he was mad. The Tarlys were given the opportunity to bend the knee, but they didn’t. Back then Daenerys thought she was the rightful ruler and the show has established that going against the rightful ruler is treason. 

The other argument I have seen is that now that she has lost everything, she has nothing to lose and that’s why she has gone mad. I believe that still doesn’t explain why she would suddenly go against the common people. The girl who chained her own children when she thought they had hurt an innocent child is not the same girl that burned down the city. You could say its character development, but the development is just not there. The transition from “unstable but kind” Danny to “Mad Queen” Dany is not there. 

Jaime: Oh boy, Jaime, what have they done to you? The layout was right there. He had a great character arc. Why would you even do this? I knew shit was going south when he said he didn’t care about the common innocent people. You mean to tell me that the man that killed the Mad King, dooming himself to be called Kingslayer for the rest of his life, doesn’t care about the common people? The whole “He cares about Cersei more” is ridiculous. His whole arc IS about getting over Cersei. Letting go of their toxic relationship. But I guess the writers didn’t see it that way. 

Cersei: This is probably the one I am angrier about. I have seen people argue that her death was realistic, which???? She died with the man she loved, a man who had just fought against supposedly one of the best fighters in Westeros, with one hand (They just ran into each other because f*ck you for caring). If she had died alone, I would have accepted it. I would have had preferred the “Valanqar” prophecy but whatever. 

Arya: You know when people say that living in the Game of Thrones world would be horrible because you would most probably die? Well, I think we have found the solution. Stick to Arya as close as possible and you will make it out of any situation. Stabbing? No problem. An army of the dead? A walk in the park. City in flames? Easy. I was hoping Jaqen or Syrio would come back but that would require the writers to remember previous seasons. Also, as nice as the Sandor- Arya moment was I cannot stop laughing at the fact that the hound told her to not get obsessed with revenge when she had already killed the Frey’s and the “Too old” dude in the brothel. 

Sandor: RIP best boy. I think that the problem I have with show!Sandor is that the writers seem to have misunderstood his character completely. Sandor hides the fact that he is sad and broken in his violent demeanor. In the books (yeah I know this is the show but I think it still applies) the worst thing he does is kill Mhyca. He is actually one of the kindest people in Kingslanding despite his façade and appearance (something Sansa realizes after he saves her several times). Sandor’s ultimate motivation is to find peace.

The writers: I am a big believer in the “Death of the author” but the more I see their interviews the more confused I get. D&D don’t seem to like ASOIAF or at least the core and heart of the books. David Benioff once said that “Themes are for eighth-grade book reports” which makes me wonder. Why would you choose to adapt a series of books that are based on the idea of themes and character arcs? I have noticed a tendency of people thinking that if a piece of media follows its themes and story to their logical conclusion it is therefore bad. Being able to predict where a story ends doesn’t make it bad. Pulling a crazy twist for the sake of drama and subverting expectations does. The execution of the themes is, in my opinion, more important than the themes themselves. That’s why I love ASOIAF, and that’s why I am so sad about the way this show is going. What do you guys think?

#daenerys targaryen #jaime lannister #cersei lannister #sandor clegane #game of thones #asoiaf #got season 8 #sansa stark #david benioff #d b weiss #arya stark

[winterisfinallyhere]

How season 7 should have gone...

...if they wanted a believable Dany/Jon love story.

____

Even the most dedicated of JonxDany fan must admit that there love story lacks finesse at best and at worst is not a love story at all. As a storyteller and watcher of way too much television, I decided to put together this little re-write of season 7 with an actual Dany x Jon romance. Mostly to demonstrate how easy it could have been done with this was the actual aim of the writers/ producers.

Let’s jump right in.

We’ll assume everything starts off the same. So we have 7x03 with Jon arriving and being stripped of his weapons. Because Dany is careful and so even though this is an impolite way to act towards someone you’ve invited as a guest, we’ll keep it

1# First meeting.

 If I was writing it the first meeting would take place pretty much anywhere but a cold and mostly empty throne room. Maybe over a shared meal, where Dany could talk like equals (which they as Queen / King are at this point). Even her small council / the war room would have made it feel better. But let’s keep the setting the same because Dany of the Many titles likes set-up like this. 

So yeah. It goes pretty similarly only this time, during their first meet, Dany tells him of the Red Woman’s visit and is a tiny bit more open-minded about the prospect of the White Walkers and the speech about how Dany managed it all because she had faith in herself gets taken out.

Jon x Dany would meet and talk and rather than having Tyrion tell her to give Jon the Dragon Glass, she would come to this decision on her own and while perhaps still a little doubtful (not sure why the girl who has three dragons isn’t willing to believe in magic, but I digress). Perhaps here, she’d ask him to bend the knee again (because she sure likes doing that) Jon would point out he’s been named king and can be unnamed(very true). The only way for her to win the north is for her to show the north she’ll fight for them. That if she truly believes herself the true ruler of all of Westeros seven kingdoms, isn’t it her duty to protect all of them? She’d come away from this talk a little unsure.

Next episode we have Jon finding the cave paintings as they mine for dragon glass. Dany agrees that this is something and rather than asking to bend the knee, she suggests he show her the army of the dead. He’d asks, “How? The Wall is hundreds of miles away.” She’d smile and say something like “Do you forget so easily? I have three dragons. I can go anywhere.” But as they exit the cave, Dany learns her forces have been defeated and that the Lanisters army is on the move with food and gold. This is where she gets annoyed with Tyrion and asks Jon’s advice. This time the advice would maybe be more like, “Send your army to handle this, but let us fly north and I’ll show you the true enemy.” She’d agree, because who wouldn’t want to spend hours cuddling with Jon Snow on the back of a dragon?

So this is where things would change majorly. Dany would not take part of the field of fire, but if the desired/ needed outcome here is to have both Sam’s brother and father dead (so he can be lord at some point maybe?) then having the Dothraki kill them would be just as effective. The coolness of a dragon battle would, of course, be lost and so would one of the defining Dark!Dany (bend the knee or die is pretty dark, an executing prisoners of war is a war crime) moments but if DxJ is going to have a happy ending this would just be a good thing.

So, now we have Dany X Jon, off on an adventure together. Possibly Dany just misses her reunion with Jorah, because that would just be for the best. Or it could be included and we’d have some much clearer parallels on how both Jon and Jorah has the hots for Dany but Dany only has eyes for Jon. 

Anyways, JXD are off to see the WW’s army. So many chances for bonding and bantering and maybe some talk of succession. Maybe how they both can’t see much further than the wars. Maybe they’d still stop off at the wall and meet up with the Brotherhood + hound. Maybe not.

Back south the gang left behind could still be attempting to negotiate some sort of peace treaty with the most amazing royal bitch of them all (Cersei) which would be a chance for the Jamie / Tyrion reunion as well as Gendry’s reintroduction. Maybe this meeting could be set up to discuss possible terms for the return of the remaining Sand Snakes / Theon’s sister (which show!!Dany seems to just have forgotten were her allies since it’s no longer convient for her).

In the north, perhaps Dany’s dragons aren’t faring quite as well as she’d hoped. This could serve as a sort of reason to why they suddenly are super easy to kill. Let’s say they do a fly over and Dany sees the Night’s King’s army and is actually horrified by it and the implications.

This is the second big change. Because in order for Dany X Jon to work out, they need to get on the same page about who the real enemy are. Canon!Dany refuses to do this even after seeing the White Walkers and having lost one of her dragons to them.

Let’s say now Dany or Jon together come up with the crazy idea of getting a wight back south. Maybe to get Cersei’s army to help them. Maybe to just show everyone that the danger is real. Not just Cersei (my sweet darling Queen of evil) but the whole realm (because let’s face it, at this point no one really believes in dead men walking). Jon agrees, a little reluctant because he knows that Cersei is not to be trusted. But he tells Dany she can’t come on this mission and instead the Brotherhood without Banners tags along. Before leaving, Jon and Dany would share a romantic kiss and she’d tell him he had to come back to her safe.

Wight hunt goes the same as the show and they end up with one they can bring along. Gendry runs back to Eastwatch but instead of having to send a raven across a whole bloody country, all he has to do is tell Dany and she’s off to save her new boy toy friend. When she shows up, she gets to play the hero, one of the dragons still dies, and instead of being a heroic fool Jon actually takes her hand and get on the dragon. The “awwaaws” in the audience is deafening.

Still wanting to return home, Jon asks Dany to come with him to Winterfell, because even though he’s falling for her he still wants to see Arya and Bran who he hasn’t seen in ages (and maybe first now learn have returned to WF). Maybe at this point, we could have some Jon X Rhaegal bonding? Maybe jokingly suggest Jon could almost fly home himself. She would tell him she can’t leave with the dragons for fear of being attacked by Cersei’s fleat but that she’ll let him return home if that is what he wishes. He chooses to stay with her to go to KL to try to gather more support and awareness.

Yet another quite OoC move, as I believe Cannon!Jon would have gone home. But alas, he’s in love with Dany or at least getting there (because he’s a guy and all guy must fall in love with Dany) and wants to stay with her.

We all know how the rest goes. We’d have the silly dragon pit meet, Cersei would find some other excuse to not accept the treaty other than Jon having bent the knee to Dany. We’d still get the shady exchange between Cersei and Tyrion, which we still don’t know what he promised her to get her to agree.

We can still have everyone reuniting at once (because that was such a great idea) and have Dany x Jon talk about the dying of the dragons and her not being able to have babies. Only she’s as determined as him to fight the NK even if Cersei tells them she won’t help. The stakes are lower, but the still need Cersei’s men to fight for them.

Having gotten their peace treaty, Jon and Dany decide to sail to Winterfell together.

We can have something similar to boat!sex the original with Bran letting us all know just how doomed this love story is in the voice over (only let’s assume they’d have skipped that if JonxDany were endgame. because it made so freaking creepy)!

Thada!

We’ve almost everything happening the same way they did, except for a small few changes in the character’s choices and settings. This way we get Dany actually believing in Jon, Dany X Jon spending private time together, an emotional first kiss, a rescue of lover and we totally eliminate the whole “I am your prisoner” aspect (if she offers to let him leave) and we still end up with creepy boat sex. Jamie can still betray Cersei, Sansa and Arya can still cut LF’s throat and Theon hopefully would have gone to rescue his sister without a Jon Snow pep talk.

So yeah. That’s my take on how Jonerys should have been done if they were actually being portrayed as a romance. But clearly, they weren’t, because there were so many chances to actually add it and make it more believable.

Dany sharing about her brothers should have led to a bonding conversation. The cave scene looks pretty romantic but Dany ruins it by asking him to bend the knee again. Rather than share why he got the scars, Dany figures it out by peeking at him as he sleeps and then deduces from what Davos said about taking a knife in the heart. Jon fails to tell her he saw his Ucel Benjen out there and that he saved him. No first kiss before the sex scene. No emotional commitment/ admission beforehand. No marriage proposal. The list goes on and on.

Point is,DXD  and their whole team didn't just completely forget how to write romance. Which means Jonersy is not the endgame romance we’ve all been waiting for. Jon might very well be attracted to her and in the commentary and in interviews they can tell us DanyXJon are in love as much as they like. But their story, what actually happened on the show was not portrayed as a romance and without changing much else in season 7 probably quite easily could have, begging all viewers to ask, why?

#anti targaryen restoration #anti-daenerys #anti-jonerys #notaromancepeople #pleasenoboatbaby #stark restoration #makingjoneryspossible

[cometsweepandleonidsfly]

“Let me ask you this: What prompted Dany to burn King's Landing? In the moment, that is. The allied forces of Dany and the North had won. In the interests of time, let's leave aside the fact that it was comically easy to kill a dragon only a week ago, but this time, the dragon deftly avoided every projectile and Dany destroyed every scorpion without even breaking a sweat. That was the first laughable moment in an episode that, ultimately, was anything but funny, given how it left the HBO drama's unreliable reputation for quality in smoldering ruins.

In any event, when Dany rested her dragon on a King's Landing wall and realized that she was victorious and the Iron Throne was (probably) hers, what — right then and there — prompted her to decide to burn the city?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

There was no proximate cause, no essential reason for the character to take that horrific action at that moment. To say that a character — or a person — has mental illness in their family tree and thus has no control over their actions is astoundingly reductive and plays into harmful and lazy stereotypes. It's also just boring writing to make a character do something stupid and then handwave it away with "Something, something mental illness!"

That's not only offensive, that's a generality that does nothing to justify that drastic action in that particular moment. All in all, the show has done a piss-poor job of explaining why Daenerys would decide to destroy the very prize she had set her heart on ruling a decade ago. We watched eight seasons of a woman at least attempting to use or think about power differently. Until she didn't. Because … reasons.

Because she had been burned by personal losses? No, sorry, that won't fly. The deaths she's endured recently have certainly contributed to her current mental state, but in the past, we've seen her go through horrific experiences and major grief without murdering thousands of people. Even when she has made mistakes, it was usually in the midst of making strategic decisions that were designed to her get to the next stage of her plan. "Because she was angry" doesn't work, because we've seen her be furious while also demonstrating restraint and realistically assessing the best way forward.

Inescapably, infuriatingly, what we're left with is apparently the central message of Game of Thrones: Bitches are crazy.

Here's how little the show thinks of Dany and how ill-served she was in "The Bells": Once the attack on King's Landing began, we didn't see her face. A core character was reduced to a vengeance-fueled cypher. All we observed, for what felt like pummeling hours, was dragonfire roasting citizens, knocking down buildings, and terrorizing soldiers and civilians alike. Despite Emilia Clarke's superlative acting abilities, we didn't see Dany for the majority of the episode's running time. She was just a faceless, personality-free supervillain, the kind you see in a by-the-numbers blockbuster. We'd been invited to understand Dany's point of view for all these years, but as the endgame approached in "The Bells," the writing made her less interesting than the purple potato known as Thanos.

In its best moments, Game of Thrones has been so much better than this, but every season has been uneven, and this season has been the most slapdash, rushed and insulting of all. At this point, I don't care what happens in the series finale, because the show has already destroyed its legacy, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, a good chunk of that legacy has to do with how ill-served its female characters have been, and the show went out of its way to double down on that in "The Bells."

Brienne was last seen wearing her robe, crying over a boy who broke her heart. The show took the beauty of Jaime knighting Brienne and — again, thanks to tin-eared, threadbare writing — turned it into a bad subplot on a crappy soap opera.

Game of Thrones used to be intermittently interested in exploring and complicating Cersei, which makes sense, given how tremendous a performer Lena Headey is. But this season especially, Cersei has been reduced to a flat, one-dimensional villain, one who is mostly offscreen, except in the occasional scenes in which she smirks or drops smug, acidic commentary. Cersei barely spoke in "The Bells," except for when the show was about to kill her off.

Sansa wasn't even on screen. Everyone in Westeros has made mistakes in their time, Sansa included, but at this point, she's shown more wisdom than most of the characters left alive. She's the most level-headed leadership material the kingdom has at the moment. So, of course, she sitting around tending the hearth in the North and hasn't been given much of interest to do (aside from being portrayed as disloyal to Jon Snow). Not surprisingly, the continually ineffectual Jon Snow wandered around in "The Bells" and once again, didn't really accomplish much. And the show is apparently just dying to put a crown on his head. Because … reasons?

If the show had given us more than a couple minutes of Arya and the Hound actually interacting in the past few episodes (or seasons), maybe her decision to forego revenge on Cersei — you know, a huge part of the motivation that has driven her for years — would have made more sense. It's not that I needed her to kill Cersei, but once Arya was in the Red Keep, the writing for her was abrupt and took the path of least resistance. Maisie Williams gave a terrific performance in the episode, but the messages "The Bells" was sending were so depressingly incoherent that it was hard to care about any of it.

"The Bells" was full of sound and fury that signified nothing, aside from an ungainly sprint to the finish line. It made me feel ill to see so much effort and money wasted on such trivial, silly, nihilistic and sexist storylines. And honestly, the men didn't fare much better: All that character development of Jaime was apparently wasted, and I'm trying to come up with a list of good decisions Tyrion made lately and I'm not coming up with much. This superlative cast deserved better.

In "The Bells," there were moments that could have contained emotional resonance, but that potential was overshadowed by decisions that Benioff and Weiss set up and executed with little or no foresight or thoughtfulness. At this point, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Game of Thrones creative team thought spectacle would make up for the lack of well-honed concluding character moments. As impressive as the visuals in "The Bells" were, they were ultimately hollow: The explosions served mostly as a reminder that Game of Thrones likes to kill people in large numbers when it runs out of ideas.

Landing like enormous chunks of masonry were so many adolescent, superficial takes on what could have been meaty themes. If it was saying anything, "The Bells" appeared to be stating that cycles of oppression and abuse can't be undone. Rulers are always self-serving and driven by greed and paranoia. Most people can't see beyond their own self-interest. The little people will always get crushed. Douchebros like Euron Greyjoy will always wear leather pants.

So much money spent, so much time spent, all for a show that never knew how to write its women consistently well and that had immature conceptions of how to end their tales. The best-executed major plot turns are moving and tragic because they feel surprising and yet inevitable. Given the right kind of in-depth character development, we could have wept for the choices Daenerys, Brienne, Sansa or Cersei made. I grind my teeth when I think about what this show turned out to be versus what it could have been. At its best, its characters have given us moving and wonderfully complex moments, but "The Bells" was Game of Thrones at its worst, and it did untold damage to the show as a whole. It's going to be hard to think of the show without feeling nauseated by what it did — especially to its women — in the home stretch. “

#my god this #got8 #game of thrones #spoilers #but the real spoilers are how the show spoiled itself

[targaryenparty]

Sansa vs Daenerys?

I find it interesting that so many Sansa fans are the ones believing the idea she’ll hate Daenerys and will go against her throughout season 8. That’s some serious lack of understanding what her entire arc through season 7 was. Do I believe Dany and Sansa will get along from the get go and become best friends who braid each other’s hair? Hell no. There’s going to have some tension in the beginning, definitely.

But to me, one thing is clear about Sansa in season 8: she’ll be the one suggesting a marriage between Jon and Daenerys.

In season 7, Sansa’s arc started with a conflict between her and Jon. They clearly had different visions when it comes to enemies: Jon wanted to forgive the sons of his traitors because the Great War is coming, but Sansa wanted to punish them because for her, nothing is more important than politics. Right after this scene, they both discussed Cersei.

Sansa: You’re the military man, but I know her. If you’re her enemy, she’ll never stop until she has destroyed you. Everyone who has ever crossed her, she has found a way to murder.

So it’s clear that Jon’s arc is about the Great War, and his true enemy is the Night King. Sansa’s arc is about politics, her true enemy is Cersei.

Despite their differences and the fact that both feel they undermine one another, she still believes he’s a good ruler.

Sansa: You’re good at this, you know.

Jon: At what?

Sansa: Ruling.

Jon: no…

Sansa: You are! You are!

But it’s interesting that the comparation is done with Joffrey, the previous King of Westeros. She thinks Jon would be way better than Joffrey, but part of her still believes that Winterfell is hers, and she would do a better job taking care of the North. 

And that conflict in her is constantly brought up by Littlefinger and Arya throughout the season.

Littlefinger: what about happy? Why aren’t you happy? What do you want that you do not have?

Jon decides to meet Daenerys, and announces he’s leaving the North in Sansa’s hands. You can see in her expression (brilliant acting by Sophie) that she’s pleased with this, and even Brienne smiles sweetly after hearing it. 

An important thing to be noticed in this scene is the fact that Sansa smiles subtly when Jon announces that Daenerys intends taking the throne from Cersei. So even though Daenerys is a Targaryen, she stills seems pleased by the idea of Dany taking down Cersei. Again, Cersei is set up as her true enemy.

Jon [about Daenerys]: she intends to take the Iron Throne from Cersei Lannister…

Sansa:

As Sansa starts ruling Winterfell, Littlefinger points out that it suits her (it’s clear he tries his best to influence her into taking the North from Jon during the whole season). So then we have an important dialogue between them:

Littlefinger: I know Cersei better than anyone here. If you turn your back on her…

Sansa: you don’t know Cersei better than anyone here

Littlefinger: I only meant to say…

Sansa: that the woman who murdered my mother, father and brother is dangerous? Thank you for your wise council.

Littlefinger: well, two things will happen: either the dead will defeat the living in which case all our troubles come to an end or… life will win out. And what then?

Littlefinger: Fight every battle, everywhere. In your mind, always.

So again (and I will repeat this as many time as I need): Cersei is the enemy she should be paying attention. She needs to foresee every battle and plan for the future, even if the dead are about to come.

As the Sansa vs Arya plot starts, we have an important dialogue between them:

Sansa: Glover has five hundred men, Royce has two thousand. Offend them, and Jon loses his army. (…) I’m sure cutting off heads is very satisfying, but that is not the way you get people working together.

Sansa knows that Jon needs armies to fight against the dead. But she’s also thinking about Cersei. Jon (and the North) needs political and military support to fight her in the future. Allies are important, and she can’t offend them or go against them if she’ll need their help in the future. That a great foreshadowing to how she’ll chose to treat Daenerys in Winterfell. It’s ridiculous that some people in this fandom believe she’ll be rude with Dany and “put Daenerys in her place”. Fight every battle. Sansa knows she’ll need her. 

Arya notices that Sansa likes the position of Lady of Winterfell. 

Arya: you’re thinking it right now. You don’t want to be, but the thoughts won’t go away.

Sansa doesn’t deny this. So it’s clear that she, now more than ever, thinks she’s capable of guarding the North and would like to do that, but she’s conflicted because Jon is a good ruler too and she trusts him (despite the fact that he still underestimates her). As she talks to Littlefinger, we have another important line that foreshadows her position in the future:

Sansa [about the northern lords]: Yes, they turned their backs on Jon when it was time to retake Winterfell, then they named him their king, and now they want to turn their backs at him again. How far would you trust men like that?

She knows the northern lords are fickle. Fight every battle. What happens if some of them decide to abandon them again in the future? 

As Sansa and Brienne talk about the Dragonpit meeting, the writers again focus on her despise for Cersei: 

I’ll not set foot in King’s Landing while Cersei Lannister is queen.

I’ll remain in the North. I have work to do here.

She knew Daenerys would probably go too, the queen that is supposedly holding her brother south. She knew Daenerys had dragons, but again, it was Cersei she was worried about. This last line can also be a great foreshadowing to Sansa’s endgame: she’ll remain in the North and be the lady she’s destined to be (is also good to remember how much the direwolves’s names indicate the future of their owners).

As she learns that Jon bent the knee, Littlefinger talks about a marriage between Jon and Daenerys:

An alliance makes sense. Together they would be difficult to defeat. He was named King in the North… He can be unnamed.

What is he suggesting? For Sansa, the best way to get out of Jon’s shadow (when it comes to ruling Winterfell) is for him to marry Daenerys and then have his title of King in the North be taken away. He would become the Queen’s consort, and would have to live with her, have children with her. And that would certainly be outside of Winterfell. How could he be Daenerys’s Warden of the North not living in the North? The title would have to go to somebody else. Fight every battle, everywhere. In your mind, always. He gives her another advice:

Littlefinger [about Arya]: What is the worst thing she could want?

Season 7 established two sides of Sansa: the one who finally learned the game and eliminated one of the biggest schemers in the series, and the one that does a good job guarding the North and would like to be in that position. As she points out herself:

I’m a slow learner, it’s true. But I learn. Thank you for your many lessons, Lord Baelish. I’ll never forget them.

So taking all this that into acount, how will Sansa react to Daenerys and her people next season? She spent season 7 learning with Littlefinger and listening to what he had to say. It’s his voice which will eco in her mind when she takes decisions and chooses a side. 

Fight every battle, everywhere. Can Sansa defeat Cersei alone, with only the northern lords and the Vale’s support? No. Can she defeat Daenerys alone, with only the northern lords and the Vale’s support? No. Can the North defeat the dead alone, without Daenerys’s help? No. 

What is the worst thing she could want? Cersei: to murder Sansa, Jon, Arya and Bran. To wipe out the Stark blood out of pure spite and take the North again.

What is the worst thing she could want? Daenerys: to make them bend and to threaten them with her dragons and armies, like Aegon once did. 

Offend them, and Jon loses his army. That is not the way you get people working together. If she offends Daenerys, they can loose her help, and they all need to work together to defeat the dead AND Cersei. Daenerys should be treated nicely enough and maybe even befriended (like Littlefinger does to his possible enemies).

In season 8, when she receives Daenerys in her home, all these thoughts will certainly go through her mind. But things will be easier than she predicted: the most powerful woman in the world is in love with her brother and would do anything for him (and his family). This woman’s ultimate goal is to eliminate the NK and then end Cersei’s reign. Not only that, if this woman marries her brother, he’ll have to go south with her, and the North will be Sansa’s. If Daenerys marries her brother, she becomes, somehow, part of the family and Sansa will have a powerful influence on her, and can therefore secure the North’s best interests. Even if one of Jon or Dany dies in the Great War, being married is the best case scenario for Sansa. If Jon dies as Daenerys's husband, Dany will forever have a bond/connection with the North and Jon's family. If Daenerys dies in the Great War as Jon's wife, he'll inherit everything that belonged to her, and the North certainly becomes stronger 

So then Jon’s true identity is revealed. Fight every battle, everywhere. What is the worst thing that could happen? Two Targaryens, two different claims. Jon vs Daenerys. Separated, they could start a civil war. Could Westeros survive the Great War, the war against Cersei AND a civil war? If Jon marries a northern lady, he’ll have Targaryen/northern babies. If Daenerys marries another lord, she’ll have Targaryen babies (she’s proud and powerful enough to pass her name to her children). Two branches of Targaryen family with their own claims = another Blackfyre type of rebellion. With this conflict, the North is in danger again. 

So what would Sansa want?

1. To go against Daenerys, treat her badly and then support Jon’s claim. With that, she looses Daenerys’s help to fight the Night King and Cersei. Now, a broken-hearted queen with dragons is the north’s enemy, and the North alone have 3 threats. But like pointed out by Sansa herself, the northern lords are fickle and she doesn’t fully trust them, so she’s left with a tiny army and she doesn’t even fully trust them. Without Jon, Daenerys will marry a man Sansa doesn’t know, and the North will have again another enemy.

or

2. Take advantage of the fact that Daenerys and Jon are in love and suggest a marriage to join their claims (I have no idea how Jon would react to this). The queen with dragons and 100k dothrakis is now her friend, ‘part of the family’, and married to Sansa’s brother/cousin (a man she trusts, acknowledges is good at ruling and who also happens to be half Stark). No matter how crazy this queen turns out to be, she’s married to Jon, and he’ll make sure she has the North’s best interest. With this marriage, Sansa has help to defeat Cersei, and if so, Jon becomes King, which means he has to move south, leaving the seat of Wardeness of the North free for her. In the future, Sansa could work her way to secure the North’s independence (if that’s still on their minds after the horrors of these wars). 

To me, it’s quite clear. If she’s a fool like her father and Robb, she’ll choose 1. If she’s smart and truly learned with Littlefinger, she’ll choose 2.

Sansa’s storyline in season 8 is clear: with Littlefinger out of the game, she’ll fill his position as the “player”. Pushing for a Jon/Dany marriage is also a great fuel for conflict with Tyrion. Out of all the characters part of the Winterfell plot next season, Sansa, Tyrion and Varys are the political ones. It’s clear at this point (for reasons that aren’t still clear to us) that Tyrion wouldn’t like a marriage between Jon and Dany, otherwise he would have suggested it already. It would be great to see Tyrion and Sansa interacting with a material richer than “we used to be married, remember?”, so seeing her going politically head to head with him would be an amazing character development. Not only that, it would be incredible to see a victim of so many arranged marriages being the one who is suggesting one to benefit her and her people.

#sansa stark #daenerys targaryen #jon snow #jonerys #game of thrones

[lawonderlandwriter]

“Back in Meereen we spoke of the possibility of a marriage alliance...”

Just a little something that came to mind last night and I knew I had to write it.

“You wanted to see me Lord Tyrion?” Daenerys announced, entering Tyrion’s tent. They were just a day’s ride from Winterfell now, Jon told them all as they made camp that evening. And Dany wondered what Tyrion could possibly want to discuss with her so late in their journey.

“Yes Your Grace. Why don’t you have a seat?” As Dany took a seat by the brazier, Tyrion poured them both a cup of wine. It was hard not to notice the way his hand shook slightly when he handed it to her. Dany’s pulse jumped. What could this possibly be about?

Tyrion took a long draft of wine before beginning to speak. His hands fidgeted with the sleeve of his coat and his eyes did not meet hers. “Your Grace, with us being only a day’s ride out from Winterfell, I thought we might take a moment to discuss our approach to presenting this new alliance between north and south.”

Dany furrowed her brow. Of all the things she had been expecting Tyrion to want to speak with her about, she hadn’t guessed this. “Well, our alliance is already in place. Jon--”

“Jon?” Tyrion finally looked at her with one raised eyebrow.

“Lord Snow,” Dany corrected herself. She would need to be much more careful about that in the future. She knew Tyrion suspected her relationship with the Warden of the North but the midst of a war was no place for romance. “Lord Snow has already pledged for House Targaryen and our cause after the dead are defeated. What more could there be to discuss?”

“Quite a lot actually,” Tyrion got up and poured himself another cup of wine but did not sit back down. “Your Grace, Lord Snow pledged to you without consulting any of his advisors, any of the lords in the north. It was done in private, almost secretly.” Dany shifted uncomfortably. Until the Dragon Pit meeting, neither she nor Jon told anyone about his pledge to her. She went on calling him the King in the North and he went on letting his advisors call him Your Grace. At the time, Dany wasn’t sure if or when either of them would ever correct anyone.

“I know this isn’t the most pleasant topic of conversation,” Tyrion went on. “But we have to plan for a not-so-warm welcome from the north.” At this, Dany chuckled to herself. It was freezing. She pulled her coat closer to her and took a sip of wine.

“Lord Snow is their Warden. His word is final. Whatever complaints the lords of the north have--”

“Your Grace, I think you’re forgetting that Jon Snow is a bastard.” Dany started. She hated that word. And knew Jon did too. It meant nothing to her, who Jon’s mother had been. But she knew she was one of the few in that respect.

“He’s still their Warden,” Dany argued. “Stark or Snow.”

“But they elected him their King, Your Grace. They could just as easily cast him aside and elect someone else with more northern values.”

“‘Northern values?’” Dany spat. “What else is more important than Jon valuing the lives of every single person in the north in the fight against the dead? He wants to save them all, save everyone in Westeros. If they think they could just abandon Jon, abandon our cause, I’ll have them burned for treason.”

“And in doing so, you’ll only solidify every single suspicion the north has against southern rulers and Targaryens.”

“They would deserve it.” Tyrion waved a hand in an attempt to calm her. This most definitely wasn’t going the direction he wanted.

“Your Grace, I do have a solution if you’re willing to hear it.”

“Of course I am,” Dany answered automatically. If he had a solution to all of this, why hadn’t he said so earlier? Instead, he’d talked in circles making her appear hot tempered and unreasonable.

“With Jon ceeding the north to you, well, at the moment it doesn’t look great. It makes him look weak.” Dany bristled. Jon was the strongest man she knew. The idea of anyone accusing him of being weak boiled her blood. “He’s the second Northern King who knelt. But if we could change this narrative, give it a different spin--”

“What kind of spin would you like to put on it, Lord Tyrion?” Dany asked exasperated by this conversation already. They had much more important things to worry about than the easily bruised egos of the northern lords.

“If Lord Snow had never come to Dragonstone at your summons, our alliance never formed, and somehow the north had defeated the army of the dead by themselves, they still would not have been safe.”

“Cersei,” Dany guessed but she really had no reason to think it incorrect. The only thing Cersei cared about was power and she wanted all of it. All seven of the kingdoms.

“Exactly. And again, assuming the north did hold against the dead, for a certainty, they wouldn’t have been able to then regroup and fight a second war against my sister. Their choices would have been dying fighting her, their castles and lands given to southern lords who had helped her cause, or bend the knee to her. And as much horror as your father put the north through in his day, Cersei and House Lannister have done worse.”

Dany nodded, but she wasn’t overly fond of the way Tyrion was presenting this. “I’m not sure the northern lords will like hearing they had to choose between the lesser of two evils, me or Cersei, anymore than they’ll appreciate hearing I’ll burn them for treason.”

“No, not at all, Your Grace,” Tyrion agreed, pouring himself yet another cup of wine for his final piece of the plan. “But we won’t present it as the north, Lord Snow, choosing between the lesser of two evils. We’ll present it as the north seizing an opportunity to have more power and influence over the entire country. Real representation in the south as opposed to just having a Warden of the North.”

“Representation in the south?” Dany puzzled. “I’m not quite sure what you mean.”

Tyrion took a deep breath. This could go one of two ways and he hoped it would go in his favor. “I know that you and Lord Snow are...fond of one another.” Dany pursed her lips but said nothing. “And right now that kind of affection is dangerous. However, there is a way we could use it to our advantage if it’s presented in the right way.”

Dany’s nostrils flared and she let out a harsh breath through her nose. “I’m listening.”

“Back in Meereen we spoke of the possibility of a marriage alliance,” Tyrion said carefully. He watched as the queen’s mouth popped open, her eyes growing wide. Surely this couldn’t have been that big of a surprise to her though. Tyrion knew the Warden of the North hadn’t slept in his own quarters since they departed from Dragonstone.

“So you would have Jon and I marry just so the lords of the north can feel more secure in their standing in the Seven Kingdoms?” Tyrion shook his head slightly. Was she completely opposed to this?

“Look, Your Grace, it will make perfect sense. A Northerner as King Consort of the Seven Kingdoms. Sansa Stark as the first Wardoness of the North. A Trueborn Stark.”

“Trueborn Stark,” Dany hissed. “We don’t have time for this Tyrion. If the lords of the north don’t wish for my help in the fight against the dead and want to rebel against their leader that they elected, then they can burn along with Night King’s army.”

“Your Grace, I think you’re forgetting something else we want to avoid in all this,” Tyrion bristled. She knew she would have to marry eventually. And he knew how much she cared for Jon Snow. Why was this such a difficult thing for her to accept?

“What?”

“The last thing we need mindless gossip,” Tyrion began again, taking a steadying breath. “Lord Snow is young and without any attachments. You are young and inarguably beautiful. We can’t have anyone believing he bent the knee to you simply because you spread your legs for him.”

SMACK.

Tyrion stumbled back as the realization of what she’d just done hit Dany. He was her Hand. He was her friend. What had she done?

“Tyrion, I...I’m so…” Tears welled in her eyes. She didn’t know what came over her. He was only trying to help. Tyrion remained silent. He took in a deep breath, his gaze somewhere between hurt and betrayed, and murderous. But instead of replying, he simply poured himself a fourth cup of wine, his hand still caressing the side of his face.

Dany grabbed a small towel from next to the washbasin and stepped outside to fill it with snow. She returned with the snow neatly wrapped in the towel and Tyrion didn’t protest or move when she knelt to hold it over his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, trying to make him meet her gaze.

“You’re a queen, you can do as you wish,” Tyrion murmured into his wine cup.

“You know that’s not the kind of queen I want to be.” Tyrion sighed and finally looked at her. The tears in her eyes told him how much she regretted what she’d done. He took the packed snow from her hands and held it in place himself while she moved to sit cross legged on the floor next to him. She looked utterly defeated.

“I thought you were in love with him,” he said after a while.

“I am,” Dany answered in a small voice.

“And he’s in love with you?” Dany nodded. That was the worst part. She had let this happen. Had let herself fall for him and let him fall for her right back and then acted on those feelings. She should have never let him into her chambers that first night on the ship to White Harbor. She should have kept her feelings to herself instead of give him this false sense of permanence. But she had been selfish.

“Then I don’t understand why--”

“What if he doesn’t want to marry me?” Tyrion shook his head. If that’s what she feared, he thought it a completely ridiculous fear. He saw the way the Warden of the North looked at their queen. It was as if he would have done anything for her, and he probably would.

“Honestly, Your Grace, I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about.” It wasn’t his best comforting voice but then again he was still irritated with her for slapping him.

“I can’t give him children.” And there it was. The one and only thing Tyrion knew Daenerys to be self-conscious about. The one thing he knew could break her down. He suddenly felt terrible for not having thought about it before.

Dany gulped, the tears that had pooled in her eyes moments before now flowing freely down her cheeks. “He’s not thinking about it now, we’re at war. But he’s a man. He’s a leader. He’ll want an heir eventually.” Dany sniffed and dabbed her nose with her sleeve. “A little boy with his grey eyes and dark curls…” she trailed off picturing, not for the first time, what Jon’s children would look like. The children that wouldn’t be hers, but someone else’s. Another northern lady perhaps.

Tyrion sighed again and patted his lap, reaching out for her. Dany rested her head on his knees, her shoulders shaking with tears as Tyrion tucked a lock of hair behind her ears. She was so young. “Does he know?” Tyrion asked, but really he already knew the answer.

“He asked me about it in King’s Landing. When I told him I couldn’t have children he suggested maybe I had been misinformed. Like he was hopeful that it wasn’t the truth.”

“He did join the Night’s Watch when he was younger. Knowing he’d never be able to marry or father children. That, to me, seems to suggest he might not want them.” Tyrion pointed out.

“Yes, but that was before a knife to the heart released him from his Night’s Watch vows,” Dany argued quietly. “He already forsook one of them. Becoming King in the North.” The longer she thought on it, the more miserable the situation felt.

“If he loves you, truly loves you, which I suspect he does, it won’t matter to him.” Dany sat up, staring at Tyrion, trying to think of another argument. “You told him you couldn’t have children and yet he initiated a relationship with you anyway. And if he did have a real desire to be a father...I don’t know. You could take in a few orphaned children. Adopt. I suspect there will be quite a few motherless and fatherless children after the war is done.”

“They wouldn’t be ours,” Dany countered, but the little bubble of hope in her chest swelled. A child. To her it wouldn’t matter. How had she never thought of such an idea before?

“You wanted to break the wheel. What better way to do so? Nobel houses. Baseborn and trueborn. The world you want to build, it shouldn’t matter. Talk to him.” A small smile spread across Dany’s face. She nodded, leaned up to kiss Tyrion on the cheek and left to find Jon.

#daenerys targaryen #jon x daenerys #jon snow #Tyrion Lannister #jon x dany #marriage alliance #got #got fanfic #jonerys fanfic #jonerys fluff

[samwpmarleau]

One thing that I don't get in ASOIAF is the fandom believe Rhaegar would make a great king, but what is exactly his accomplishments beside ToH and played harp?

You’re right in saying that his list of hard accomplishments is rather small. We know of only three tourneys that he entered (though he’s said to have been a consummate jouster, so presumably he did enter others), one of which he lost, one of which took him 12 rounds to win, and all three of which had final matches against members of the Kingsguard, who are known to more or less throw said matches to ensure they don’t injure their future sovereign.

(No one can say he wasn’t in a league of his own when it comes to moping, though. The guy spent extended periods of time alone at haunted Summerhall, the place most of his family died horrifically in a fire, in order to brood and write depressing songs, I mean really.)

However. You have to consider his image.

Until he took off with Lyanna, he was the absolute perfect prince. He was scholarly, which pleased the maesters, but also martial, which pleased the lords. He was handsome beyond measure, he sang songs so affecting they made wolf-blooded Lyanna cry, he wasn’t a womanizer nor did he solicit prostitutes, he was allegedly courting lords to depose his father, he did his duty by his wife and not only had a Targaryen-looking son but also a daughter that could be used for marriage alliances, he did the smart and respectful thing by moving his household to Dragonstone instead of staying in King’s Landing, etc. etc. Even the debacle at Harrenhal didn’t irreparably damage public perception.

Without the benefit of hindsight, well, there was hardly a single thing wrong with him. Maybe a little dreary, but then, Jaehaerys I didn’t exactly sound like he was the life of the party either and he’s remembered as the best king Westeros ever had.

Nearly two decades after civil war ripped the realm apart, singers continue to frame Rhaegar’s liaison with Lyanna as a tale of star-crossed lovers, a tragic romance, two people that just wanted to run away together. Only Robert is outwardly vitriolic, a vitriol that is referred to as a “madness” in him and thus more or less undermined.

All of that is, I believe, why many people in the fandom view Rhaegar so positively, because almost all of Westeros does. He’s the King That Could Have Been. Truthfully, I was of that same mind until a little over a year ago when I started analyzing it all, so I can hardly blame fans who take what the story says at face value since I used to do it myself.

But the problem is that you can’t just take things at face value and say Rhaegar would have been the best ruler since Jaehaerys, because he would not have been. He would have been closer to Aerys I, who incidentally was also obsessed with arcane matters and prophecy to the point of neglecting the realm (though Rhaegar did at least consummate his marriage and have children, which is more than Aerys did with poor Aelinor Penrose).

Best case scenario is if the Rebellion doesn’t happen and Aerys is deposed peacefully, because then Rhaegar is operating under almost unanimous goodwill (even Tywin may be brought back in the fold provided Rhaegar agrees to marry Cersei to Viserys or something). But even then, there’s still the issue of Elia not being able to have another child after Aegon, because no matter what, Rhaegar wants his third head and fast. If he doesn’t opt to kill his wife in childbirth, presumably he decides to go after Lyanna as in the original timeline. In which case even if it doesn’t come to war, he’s still massively pissing off the Starks, Baratheons, Martells, and his own mother. Not to mention that having a child with Lyanna means a bastard, likely one he would then legitimize, and let’s just say the last time there was a Targaryen bastard running around, it didn’t end well. So he’s got that to contend with, too.

But let’s say he manages to smooth things over enough to keep the country going. Barring an extreme personality shift, now that he has his three heads (though I’m not sure how he’d address Jon being, well, Jon, and not his Visenya), he’d be more focused than ever on the Long Night. He’d probably want to bolster the Night’s Watch forces, stockpile food and weapons, train not only his sons for combat but Rhaenys as well, try to obtain and hatch dragon eggs, and plan not for the immediate future but for 17 or so years down the line when the Others come. As we saw IOTL, the current status of the realm is secondary in his mind, because what does the status of the treasury matter if the Long Night isn’t prepared for?

Of course, maybe he’s a better juggler than anyone gives him credit for and he oversees the realm well and plans for the future, but I sincerely doubt it. Based on what we know, he is far more like the aforementioned Aerys I or Baelor the Blessed than, say, Daeron II. Which is something I think the people of Westeros would come to realize quite quickly. Whether Rhaegar’s madness mindset becomes so much of an issue that the people end up wanting him deposed, I don’t know. I don’t think it would get that bad, considering not even Aegon IV was kicked off the throne, but it’s a possibility–if, for instance, his son Aegon grew up in the vein of avuncular ancestor Baelor Breakspear.

I should also point out that this AU means Dany will have never been born, which throws a wrench in things, not that Rhaegar knew it.

And if the Rebellion does happen, well, Rhaegar’s exponentially more fucked. Of those who supported the crown, only the Tyrells were really of note (support that was half-assed to begin with). While Aerys was the one who escalated the situation, there wouldn’t have been a situation to escalate if Rhaegar hadn’t done what he did, and it’s not like Rhaegar would even really be able to reward the loyalists with marriage in the way Robert did since he was still married to Elia and had three kids. People may have considered him better than Aerys, but Rhaegar’s shine would have most assuredly worn off for them. At which point, Rhaegar not only has to keep the realm stable, but stabilize it to begin with. That means concessions up the wazoo and political appointments, plus things like needing to replace the dead Kingsguard and getting rid of all the wildfire beneath King’s Landing. After that, it’s the same as in the non-Rebellion scenario. He’s still going to be much more focused on the Long Night than he is on matters of state, which will put off almost everyone, especially since no one would believe him about the Others.

So no, as far as I’m concerned Rhaegar would not have made a good king, but I can see where fans get the notion that he would (looking at you, Barristan). He would have been better than his father in many respects but worse in others, and his laser focus on something in the distant future that people not Rhaegar, Aemon, or Bloodraven think is a big fat fairy tale would land him at best in disfavor and at worst deposed.

#anonymous #rhaegar targaryen #asoiaf

[jodiwalker]

These Are the Best Things Happening on ‘Game of Thrones’ Right Now, Part II

Hey y'all, something bad is coming on Game of Thrones, so just real quick, let's remember the good times in episodes 3 and 4, when teenage assassins were reuniniting with their teenage ruler sisters and teenage psychic brothers. When Littlefinger was getting ragged on so hard. When Jon and Davos had nothing better to do than chalk up the cave walls of Dragonstone with little bitty zombie drawings to prove a point and flirt with Missandei, respectively.

There were Catspaw Dagger references for the most careful of watchers, Jon saying "I'm not a Stark" as a Targaryen dragon flies overhead for the mildly observant viewer, and there's Jon and Dany touching each other's wrists in caves for everyone else who's just like, I don't understand what's happening here, I've never understood what's happening here, I don't care what's happening here, but I will be here until it's all over and Dany has married her nephew, SO HELP ME R'HLLOR.

So, once again, this is not a recap, not a review, just a simple, definitive, and all-encompassing list of The Best Things Happening on Game of Thrones right now (which is to say last week and the week before):

Almost Everyone Playing the Game of Thrones Is a Baby-Child

It suddenly became clear in episode 3 that while the lead characters in Game of Thrones don't seem particularly young when they are commanding their armies and large, magic animals—when they come face to face in a throne room, they suddenly seem like two particularly formidable and hormonal teenagers facing off at a Model United Nations simulation. Except, y'know, one of them recently died and was resurrected by a thousand year old sexy priestess, and the other has a bunch of giant toddler dragons and, like, ended slavery, I think.

I'm, of course, speaking of Dany and Jon, the two most popular rulers at Westeros High. Now, since Kit Harrington and Emelia Clarke are each 30, you wouldn’t think they would seem that young…but they're also both, like, 5'1 if they're an inch, so when they first came face-to-face in episode 3, they more often resembled a couple of adorable Shiba Unus tussling over a Kong ball and sniffing each other's butts, instead of two rulers arguing over getting to save the world in the specific way they want to.

In that sense, their first meeting was a particularly precious reminder of how young they still are. Yes, all the GoT kids were aged up three or four years from the books at the start of the series, but Dany and Jon are still only 22 or 23 as they fight to save the world from heretofore unknown evils—and by that, I of course mean Queen Cersei making ever woman get her goofy pageboy haircut. 

When Missandei announces Dany like one of Blair Waldorf's be-headbanded lackeys, Game of Thrones briefly turned into a Disney Channel Original movie, bringing along all the clashing dynamics of darkness and precociousness a DCOM denotes. You can practically hear Missy saying, "You stand in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn, President of the Student Council, rightful member of the A/B Honor Roll, rightful owner of a used Ford Prius she got as a reward for said A/B Honor Roll, Haver of an Afterschool Volunteer Internship at a Veterinary Office, Breaker of Bullies, the Sister of a College Sophomore Who Lets Her Wear His Old Fraternity Formal Shirts So People Think She's Cool, Voted Most Likely to Play with Fire and Like It a Little Too Much, and the Survivor of a Particularly Bad Case of Strep Throat Last Year.

You scared yet Jon Snow, you creepy-loner-who-doesn't-know-he's-hot-and-smokes-cigarettes-behind-the-school-but-secretly-makes-all-As-and-has-a-heart-of-gold-Patrick-Verona-lookin'-ass, you?

If Dany hasn't stood up on the Iron Throne and tearfully choked her way through a rendition of the "10 Things I Hate About Jon Snow" by the end of all this, I will be shocked. Because, as we will discuss later, Dany doesn't hate King Jon (King Snow? No, that doesn't sound right, does it Davos)…not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

The Stark Children Are Happy…Well, As Happy As a Live Stark Child Can Be

Of course that's not even mentioning the actual children roaming around Winterfell with severe PTSD and a recently developed case of the huggies. Sansa's running the Stark show at Winterfell while Jon is away at Dragostone giving up all his weapons and doing arts and crafts in the underground caves, and in her time as a prisoner of various evil families, she seems to have picked up quite a knack for organizing grain supplies and commanding that leather be added to armor because the dipshits apparently haven't heard that WINTER HAS COME.

I thought Sansa would be cool for like an episode or two and then go back to being dreadful, but her recent transition from Little Sister to Big Sister inside the walls of Winterfell seems to be suiting her well. When Meera finally brings Brann back home and after dragging his 6'4 ass all over the North, she gets exactly zero sibling hugs because her brother died protecting Brann—justice (and a warm shower) for Meera—but the newly minted Three Eyed Raven gets a sweet embrace from big sister Sansa. 

He returns the love by informing Sansa that now he can see everything that's ever happened in the world, including the worst night of her life when she was forced to marry Ramsay and he raped her.

Hey Brann, I know it's not your fault that Jaime Lannister pushed you out of a window, and your dad got beheaded, and Theon fake-torched you, all setting you on a fan-least-favorite path toward becoming the Three Eyed Raven but—you totally suck! Someone else can tell Jon he's a Targaryen if it means you having to be all weird to your sisters now that you're finally, gloriously, wonderfully reunited. In this extended high school analogy I've been drawing, Brann is the kid who took one philosophy class at the community college for extra credit and thinks he knows everything now. You don't know shit, Brann!

Okay, fine, Brann knows some shit, and is obviously intended for some higher purpose in this game of thrones or he surely wouldn't have been—quite literally—dragged through all seven seasons. I just wish that purpose was being a nice supportive brother to his super-survivor sisters, which brings us to…

ARYA IS BACK AT WINTERFELL AND SHE SPARRED WITH BRIENNE AND MAYBE THEY CAN GO LADY-ARMOR SHOPPING TOGETHER NOW, WHAT'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD?!

As it turns out, the already disparate Stark children have become even more contrasted with time and (grueling, awful, traumatic, painful, oftentimes unbelievable) circumstances. Sansa, who was a pretty girl who wanted to marry a prince, is now the Wardeness of Westeros' largest region with a keen political mind and a dude who would fucking love to marry her that she's constantly mocking. Arya was a tomboy who had a real good time at her afterschool swordsmanship lessons, and has since grown into a stone-cold assassin who cuts people's faces off and magic-pastes them onto her own face, then feeds those recipient of the face-cutting to his own family, and then also kills that entire family. Brann has turned from a boy who liked to ride horses into Westeros' creepy Miss Cleo, and also, he no longer goes by Brann, and also, is a pretty constant dick to the women in his life.

That all kind of made me love their reunions even more though. Arya saying, "Do I have to call you Lady Stark?" as her first greeting to Sansa was incredible. Sansa replying, "Yes," very much in the way of Old Sansa, but then turning around and hugging Arya and bonding with her about how much pain they've lived through and how everything they used to know is dead except for each other was even better. And Sansa telling Arya that "Brann has visions," in the same tone of voice you might warn a guest that your little brother has recently gotten really into making his own chainmail was EVEN BETTER.  There was also Jon all the way over at Dragonstone being all "She's startin' to let on" when Tyrion says that Sansa is smarter than she lets on—love those two, sure hope Littlefinger doesn't turn them against each other and shatter my heart into a million pieces!

But simply the best was watching those three rough and tumble Starks wheel and walk their way back from the Weirwood tree and into their home at Winterfell, down a couple family members, not really sure of who they've become, and probably on the brink of being murdered by ice zombies, sure…but they're also together—three lone wolves restored to a pack—and, for now, they're alive.

Of course, it is hard to ignore all that side eye Sansa was giving Arya as she sorted that out that Lil' Sis super-duper was not kidding about having a murder list. But Sansa isn't on said murder list, and hey, she also once fed a dude to his (canine) children, so maybe this girl gets it. Maybe everything will be fine and once Jon and Dany save the world, they can all go in on a family beach house together and parasail on dragons. Speaking of…

THAS-A-MUTHAFUGGIN-LOOT-TRAAAAAAAIN

I've always thought of Weiss and Benioff as kind of cool young dudes who were surprisingly hot and surprisingly married to Amanda Peet (which I would want to brag about in Emmy speeches too, no shade). But for some reason, recently, they've started to seem more and more to me like kind of clueless dads who, were we ever to see their legs in the after-show interviews, would be wearing pristine New Balances with loosely fitted light-wash jeans.

I don't know if it's because I recently fell into a deep dark YouTube black hole where I watched clips of a panel where Sophie Tuner and Maisie Williams interviewed B&W and just keep making fun of them for being old (of note, Sophie Turner is really funny). Or if it's because they're quite literally getting older and making this show where they have to spend three million dollars to light 20 real people on fire in order to make it look like 1,000 fake people are being lit on fire has probably aged them an extra decade.

But mostly I think it's because now that they're out from under the shadow of GRRM they can stop pretending they're dead inside and let their TV pathos flags fly, and that alone makes them seem a lot less hard than they used to. Them talking about how Dany and Jon it's so obvious Jon and Dany have developed feelings for each in the cave scene was just adorable. Guys! They've had like, two conversations, and neither one has made a single inappropriate "bend the knee" joke which they obviously would if they were two real life 19-year olds falling in luv in a cave.

All this is to say that, I am so thankful to them for bringing GoT to my television, but truly, only two dumb dads could have taken this insane, explosive, dragon-fueled battle and called it…"The Loot Train Attack." Or as I prefer to call it: the mutha fuckin' LOOOOOT TRAAAAAAIN!!!

There is nothing that I can personally write that would make the battle where Dany brought dragons to a sword fight at the counsel of Jon any better than it already was, so I'll be brief: It is in episode 4 of season 7, at the end of the Loot Train—LOOT TRAAAAAAAIN!—battle, as Jaime charges Daenerys with a giant spear, that it became clear just how impossibly complex this web of character has become. It used to be impossible to root for anyone because they were all either evil or definitely going to die in the next episode exactly because they weren't evil. No more.

I had no idea who I would choose to live and die between Jaime and Dany. And that is perhaps unique to me because in this game of thrones, everyone can choose their own winner and we can all be simultaneously right and wrong. Just as the people of Westeros are born into certain houses, we all have our allegiances. But the time is coming for us to also make important choices, because things can only be happy reunions and convenient river dives and spare Sand Snake killings and flirty-cave-fun-times for so long. Sides will be chosen, alliances will be made, and main characters will start getting their heads chopped off again. Weiss and Bennioff might be out dads, but if TV has taught me anything—and it has taught me literally everything—it's that tough love is the most rewarding form of parenting.

And also that women always keep their bra on during sex—except for right here on H-B-O!

#game of thrones #game of thrones recap #loot train attack

[choupetit]

GOT Recap: The Spoils of War

Airdate: 8/6/2017 ; Season 7, episode 4 

 So, I don’t mean to be dramatic or anything, but…OMG, THIS WEEK’S GAME OF THRONES WAS FREAKIN’ AMAZING!!! This episode was a beautiful gift from the TV gods with more reunions, more Jon and Dany, more Littlefinger side eye, and dragons galore! I’ve managed to gather up my jaw from the floor to bring you the recap of “The Spoils of War”, so let’s not waste another moment! 

But Jaime, I Want A Castle NOW! 

Ah, the spoils of war, indeed! The Lannister army has packed up all the goodies and gold they’ve won after their surprise attack on House Tyrell and they’re on their way home from Highgarden. Jaime Lannister grabs a hefty bag of gold from the money wagon and hands it to Bronn, then sends the driver on his merry way to King’s Landing. Mopey Bronn has a bad case of First World problems as he bitches and moans about how he wants a proper reward, like…oh, I don’t know, a castle…maybe even the one they just stormed. Jaime is all, “Seriously, dude? Quit yer whining, you just got a load of cash. Daenerys Targaryen would probably evict you in a week. And besides, castle upkeep is pricey.  Once you’ve paid the whole Downton Abbey staff and fed the moat monster, there’s barely enough money left to fill your Olympic-sized pool with champagne every day. You’ll get your pick of castles once we’ve won the war.” Bronn musters up the strength to silence his inner Veruca Salt as Randyll Tarly and Dickon (whom Jaime keeps calling Rickon) appear, and Jaime sends the three men off to shake down the local farmers for their harvest.

 Meanwhile at the Red Keep in King’s Landing, Queen Cersei tells the Iron Bank representative that she’s able to repay the full debt she owes. The money is on its way as they speak. The rep is duly impressed and informs Cersei that the bank will be happy to make a new loan for her next venture: Restoring her rule in Westeros. Cersei shares that she’s growing her army and has reached out to the Golden Company in Essos - your basic mercenary placement agency. As soon as the gold arrives, the rep assures Cersei that she’ll have the Iron Bank’s full lending support to pay for her hired guns. 

I Know What You Did Last (Long) Summer 

At Winterfell, Petyr Baelish aka Littlefinger has a one-on-one meeting in Bran’s chambers to give him a gift: The dagger that was used in the assasination attempt against young Bran shortly after his tower-falling accident. The blade is made of Valyrian steel, btw. Littlefinger muses that it could be argued that this dagger launched the War of the Five Kings. He claims that it is his mission to protect the Stark children - anything Bran needs, Littlefinger is his guy. Gee, coming from a slimeball who arranged the worst marriage ever between Sansa and Vile Ramsay, I’d have to say that’s a hard pass. When Bran asks Littlefinger if he knows to whom the dagger belonged, Baelish says no. Littlefinger goes on to ponder that it’s so weird, doncha think, how the dagger led to all the craziness that happened to the Starks, and made Bran who he is today. He remarks that Bran must have seen unfathomable things beyond the Wall (cue laughter) and sympathizes that it must be odd to return to Winterfell among so much chaos. To which Bran flatly replies “Chaos is a ladder.” A hint of alarm flashes across Littlefinger’s face, and luckily for him, Meera Reed appears at the door and he has the perfect excuse to leave. 

Quick side note: If you, like me, were totally confused by Bran’s line, then rejoice for the interwebs! Apparently it’s a callback to a conversation Littlefinger had with Varys back in season 3, when the former said “Chaos is not a pit. Chaos is a ladder.“ 

Bran just out-creeped the resident creeper! Looks like Lord Baelish is going to have to recalibrate all those battles he is always fighting in his head to predict every scenario that could happen in real life! 

 As for Meera, she’s come to bid farewell. She tells Bran that she’d like to stay, but she needs to return to her family what with the snow zombie apocalypse coming, and Bran is about as safe as it gets now that he’s home. Bran goes, “K, cool. Gracias. Bye, Felicia.” Dumbfounded, Meera is all, “Really?! That’s all you’ve gotta say? Wtf, dude. Lots of people died or almost died helping you.” And Bran’s all, “Yeah, so…I’ve got a lot of data uploaded to my brain and it’s kinda hard to keep track of emotions and personality and stuff. But hey, girl, I vaguely remember what it’s like to have feelings and the old me is stoked that you were there for me, but the new me just can’t do this whole attachment thing right now.” Meera’s face crumbles and she says what we all have been thinking, "You died in that cave.” She fails to add “You may want to tone it down on the voyeuristic creepazoid thing, which is freaking everybody out." 

Just outside of Winterfell, Arya has arrived and is trying to convince some a-hole bouncers at the gate that this is her home. They don’t believe her and tell her to eff off, but she talks them into letting her into the courtyard while she waits for them to get Sansa. The guards squabble amongst themselves and when they turn, she’s gone. 

When the guards give Sansa the news of her little sister’s return, she knows exactly where to look for Arya. In the underground mausoleum, Arya stands at her father’s grave when Sansa arrives. It’s a sweet reunion as Arya’s first words are "Do I have to call you Lady Stark now?” And Sansa replies, stone-faced, “Yes.” She breaks into a smile, and the sisters hug warmly. Each hints to the other that they’ve been though hell since they last saw each other. Arya is eager to know if Sansa really killed King Joffrey, and when Sansa says no, Arya tells her he was at the top of her kill list. Sansa thinks she’s joking and Arya lets her. Sansa informs her baby sister that Bran is home, too, and the look on her face screams “Gurl, things are pretty cray around here." 

 The sisters meet up with their brother at the Godswood Tree, which is Bran’s version of “Central Perk”…without the friends, java, or general joie-de-vivre. Arya throws her arms around Bran, who looks like he’s absentmindedly trying to recall typical human interactions, and gives her an awkward emotionless hug. He tells her he saw her at the crossroads to King’s Landing and Winterfell, and seems a bit surprised that she is here. Wait a second, did he only briefly flip to the Arya channel and not bother to see what came next? I thought this guy was all-seeing/knowing! Harrumph! He shows both sisters the dagger he received from Littlefinger. Arya immediately notes it’s made of Valyrian steel while Sansa warns that Littlefinger never does anything for anybody without wanting something in return. Bran don’t care. He gives the dagger to Arya, saying she’ll get more use from it than a cripple. I can’t help feeling he knows that Arya is going to have a run-in with some Whitewalkers and will find that dagger mighty handy. 

Then I Saw His Cave, Now I’m A Believer 

At Dragonstone, Queen Daenerys and Missandei are walking down to the beach to meet up with Jon Snow, who has found a cave full of Dragonglass, which he’s ready to mine. Jon calls Dany over. "Yo gurl…I wanna show you something inside this dark cavern…” and everybody immediately goes “Oooooh, Ygritte be spinning in her grave!” But this is Jon we’re talking about, and he legit wants to show her a bunch of cave drawings that he believes were made by the Children of the Forest. I'mma start to call them Toddlers of the Forest because they draw on walls, make rash decisions, and leave ginormous messes for others to clean up. 

 Dany is amazed by the artwork in the cave and marvels that it could have been made before men even existed. But Jon’s all “Nuh uh, look over here.” And we see crude drawings of men and then…Whitewalkers. Jon’s all, “See, queenie? Living proof! They worked together to defeat their common enemy. Case closed! You believe me now?” I cannot properly express just how badly I wanted the camera to pan down to his hand holding a piece of chalk, or show a close-up of the tiny initials J.S. etched underneath the Whitewalker stick figures. 

Dany tells Jon she will fight for him on one condition: Bend the damn knee! But Jon is all “Yeah, but no, ‘cuz my people won’t accept a Southern ruler, so that’s not gonna fly.” To which Dany goes, “They will if their king tells them to. It would be a shame for them all to die, just because you couldn’t get over yourself.”

 They emerge from the cave to bad news from Tyrion Lannister and Varys: Casterly Rock is won, but…oopsies, Dany’s fleet was destroyed and Highgarden is toast, too. Oh, and Cersei has made sure that all food has been removed from The Reach, so Dany's army of Unsullied will starve on their way back on foot. Daenerys is furious.  She’s lost all her allies and it seems the conversation she had with Lady Olenna about ignoring advice from clever men is really speaking to her. She wants to hop a dragon and go nuclear on King’s Landing. Tyrion strongly advises against it, but Dany points out that he’s been pretty sucky in the advice department.  She even suggests that perhaps Tyrion is purposely giving bad counsel to protect his family. Burn.  She turns to her Northern visitor and asks “What Would Jon Do?” and the reply is “Well, if I was trying to win the love and loyalty of all of Westeros and set myself apart from all previous and current rulers, I sure as hell wouldn’t lay fiery waste to an entire city, killing thousands of civilians.” You can practically hear Tyrion’s inner monologue screaming “Yes!!!! Thank you, Voice of Reason!" 

 Back at Winterfell, Brienne and Podrick are sparring in the courtyard, when Arya comes along and tells Brienne she wants to train with the woman who beat The Hound in battle. We get a sweet sequence of Arya showing off her badass fighting skills while Sansa and Littlefinger look on from the mezzanine and Sansa seems to be wondering "Wtf is going ON with all my siblings?!” Arya has an exhilarated smile on her face as she fights and eventually bests Brienne. When Brienne asks who taught her to fight like that, Arya grins and says “No one”. She looks up and sees Littlefinger and her smile fades fast. Is he on her kill list, I wonder.

 Hundreds of miles away, Jon and Ser Davos are walking the walls of Dragonstone and Davos asks what Jon thinks of Dany, hinting that she is a hottie. Jon’s all “Dammit, man, I don’t have time to date right now, I’m trying to save my people and all of humanity.” They encounter Missandei on their walk and she tells them what an inspiration Dany is to all the people who follow her. They notice a Good Greyjoy ship and head to the shore where Theon arrives by boat. Jon tells Theon he would kill him if it weren’t for the fact that Theon helped Sansa escape from Ramsay Bolton. Theon tells them he needs Dany’s help to rescue his sister from Uncle Euron, but Jon replies “Dany ain’t here, yo." Hmmm, where could she be? 

Don’t Mess With The Dragon Mama

On an open field, still a distance from Kings Landing, a large group of the Lannister army is taking a rest while Jaime and Bronn look on. Commander Randyll Tarly rides up and informs Jaime Lannister that the gold has been safely transported to Cersei. He says the soldiers need to catch up with the front end of the regiment at the Blackwater rush and asks for permission to flog any stragglers as motivation to get moving. You get the sense that he considers flogging others a perk of the job.  Ugh, Randyll is such a miserable guy. 

Jaime and Bronn ask Rickon - I mean Dickon! - what he thought of his very first battle at Highgarden and he confesses it was hard to fight men he grew up with…and surprisingly stinky. Bronn smugly points out it’s the smell of men pooping their pants when they die. Lovely imagery there, dude. Suddenly Bronn realizes things have gotten too quiet. Jaime is on high alert and shouts to the soldiers to get into formation, because something’s a comin’. 

The tension is palpable. In the distance we see a horde of Dothraki closing in. Hurrah for Team Dany! Although, it’s kind of a conflicting feeling of triumph, because I hate Queen Cersei, but I’m also rather fond of Jaime and Bronn.  Maybe they’ll be aight…hopefully. I know the term "epic battle” is brought out often, especially where Game of Thrones is involved (deservedly so), but believe me when I say what follows truly is an epic, heart-racing battle scene. Words can’t do it justice, but here are some of the need-to-know highlights: 

 The Dothraki ride in like the unhinged, badass warriors they are, and as they get closer and closer to the Lannister army you just know a dragon is gonna appear soon. And appear it does! Drogon swoops over the horde, taking the lead, and we get a close-up of Dany on his back as she says “Dracarys!” and her Dragon spews out a stream of fire onto the shocked Lannister army. Total chaos ensues as burning men flail and run and we get lots of breathtakingly awesome shots of Drogon just shooting out flames like a laser beam, making a barbecue of any poor soul who happens to be in the line of fire. Meanwhile the Dothraki are handling things on the ground. 

 Amidst the madness, Jaime instructs Bronn to get to the wagon with Cersei’s secret weapon: Qyburn’s jumbo dragon-slaying crossbow. In true Bronn fashion we get the retort “Why me?” -“Cause it takes two working hands, ya jerk, DO IT!!!" 

 A Dothraki warrior singles out Bronn as he makes his way through the burning hellscape, and there’s a sad moment for all animal lovers when Bronn’s horse loses a leg.  Bronn eventually gets the upper hand when he reaches the giant crossbow and fires it at his Dothraki assailant - skewering him. I mean…they ARE at a barbecue, after all. 

 As Dany continues to soar over the disoriented mass of soldiers and Drogon sets things ablaze, Bronn takes aim at the creature. He misses the first time, but the second shot hits Drogon in the chest. It’s not an immediately fatal shot, but the dragon falls from the sky.  Somehow the beast manages to regain enough control to land with Dany still safely perched on his back. Jaime is about a football field’s distance from where Dany and Drogon have landed, and Dany is trying to remove the massive spear from Drogon’s chest. 

Tyrion and Varys look on from a great distance and Tyrion mutters "You effing idiot!” when he sees Jaime charging toward Dany on horseback. Just as Jamie is mere feet away, Daenerys turns around and Drogon turns his head to blow a giant stream of fire at Jaime. But before the inferno can engulf him, somebody rides up and knocks Jaime from his horse and both men fall into a conveniently-placed body of water. Jaime sinks deeper and deeper into the water and…the credits roll. 

 Holy Mother of Dragons! What an intense final 20 minutes that was! The music and camerawork were simply perfect and I loved the sequence of Bronn making his way to the dragon-killing weapon - it was shot beautifully and conveyed the disorienting horror of the battle. I was covering my face for the whole battle scene, cringing and shouting expletives at the screen, praying that no Dragons would die. 

 Man oh man! Still kind of recovering from the excitement. I’m hoping desperately that Drogon’s wounds aren’t fatal. Dany can’t lose her favorite dragon-child! Perhaps it’s time to invest in some dragon-sized chainmail. 

Pretty sure Jaime will survive - at least till the next episode - and my guess is that Dickon saved him, and will be getting more screen time. Even though this was a set-back for Cersei, I’m sure she’ll return with a vengeance once her hired hands from Essos come to town. 

 It’s great to have all the legit Stark kids back home and I’m loving the buddy pair-up of Arya and Brienne. Although poor Sansa is all “Damnit, I’m stuck with Littlefinger while everybody else gets to have all the fun.” What will Baelish do next? I feel like he probably wants to peace out of Winterfell, considering there is a highly trained assassin in the hizzy and a know-it-all who likely has seen every scheme and backstabbing thing Littlefinger has ever done. I think it’s high time for Bran to start giving people some useful info instead of just being all “I’ve been working on this cool time traveling Peeping Tom hobby lately” with everybody he meets; giving Arya the dagger is a good start. 

 Next week it looks like we’re getting some Whitewalker action, or, at the very least, an update on the Wildlings at East Watch. Will Jon finally “bend the knee” in order to get a dragon on loan from Dany to help out his pals in the north? He’s just gotta suck it up and do it, right? But will Dany even be able to spare any of her Unsullied what with Cersei’s sneaky outmaneuvering at Casterly Rock? So much can happen! With only three episodes left, every minute is precious and I’m pretty optimistic the final episodes are going to deliver mucho good times! Hang tight until next week, my dears!

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