theowlsarenotwhattheyremembers

[theowlsarenotwhattheyremembers]

Episode Seven: The Dragon and the Wolf

Cocks and Blood.

I don’t know how many levels of irony Scene One was on. The Unsullied, last heard of / forgotten after having pointlessly won Casterly Rock pre-stripped of food and besieged, are now lined up in well-fed ranks, because of plot nihilism. Jaime and Bronn discuss blood (family) and cocks and how they have them but the Unsullied don’t but then the barbarously virile Dothraki turn up with clearly more and bigger cocks apiece than any Lannister or lannlackey. What does all this mean? Is there an answer? Maybe, in the end, it is just cocks.

Look I know this recap is about a fortnight overdue. I have had to hand in a dissertation and then I was tired. We are all tired. This shit is tiring. Settle down. Rest. We have an hour and twenty minutes to get through and darn it we are going to escape from everything that’s tiring us out through lushly cinematographised fanfic cocks and all. Who doesn’t like cocks? Cocks cocks cocks.

Let’s carry on.

Scene Two: Tyrion lets Jon know that the leaping loins of Fleabottom have populated the city with a million warm sweaty bodies. King’s Landing, when compared to other cities of the early modern period, is bigger than any European city was ever, after Rome fell, until the Industrial Revolution. It’s more like the equivalent of Beijing or Edo-period Tokyo. Cool! This is, Jon observes, bigger than the entire North, and they’re all going to be ice wights unless our heroes prevail. Why would anyone want to live with all those other people?? The fucking’s better, Tyrion explains.

Scene Three: The bagged ice wight has retained its horrid vigour!!! Does this mean that the White Walkers can’t take unlife away once they’ve given it? (Does anything mean anything any more)

Scene Four: Cersei tells her undead henchlump to kill everyone.

Scene Five: Dragons understand that property is theft and children can be delicious if you are a large fanged lizard, so they had to be put in prison, which destroyed them and the vigour they animated the Targaryen blood with, Tyrion lets Missandei know. Then we have a massive reunion pile-on! The feels get mushy as Pod+Tyrion “you can suck his magic cock later”, the Hound+Brienne (Arya’s ultraviolent fosterfam are so proud of her!)

, and Bronn+Tyrion “I’ll pay you double”. That everyone is about to die is vigorously foreshadowed making me extremely anxious, but the pre-tension is pissed up the wall and everyone settles down for a civil conversation, because nothing matters any more. Tyrion+Cersei. The Hound+The Mountain, brothers, death and unlife can’t change blood, blood runs strong and hot, it’s the end of the world but #cleganebowl has been written in ruddier ink than this multideaths-are-coming tensionmusic can inscribe. Then the Queen herself arrives, atop her non-cock Drogon, who envelops with flame but does not penetrate (but wait till the final scene when Ice Viserion fucks the wall). Everyone is v impressed with Daenerys’ lady-D and how unambiguously it testifies to the rights her blood demands. Prophecy music plays. Cersei is upstaged. Did you know that the Lannisters are basically just nouveau-riche - their Age of Heroes ancestor Lann the Clever wasn’t even a king or a god like the other aristocrats? At best he was only the bastard son of one. Uncle Euron taunts Theon about his sister; but Tyrion/Cersei shut him up. These guys, the Greyjoys, trace their line back to the Grey King, who won a war against the Storm God, married a mermaid, and lived for a thousand years (i.e. was basically some form of deity himself). Seems likely Theon’ll bounce back eventually. They do the show and tell with the wight and then Euron storms off pretending to go home but actually going to pick up the legendary mercenary army Cersei just hired. Qyburn is definitely not on the side of the living. These guys are evil!! Cersei makes a pretend offer to help but Jon Snow is full truth, in love, with fire in his blood and his britches, so he messes up the fake negotiations.

Scene Six: Tyrion+Cersei chat over wine, and Cersei wins by letting Tyrion think he’s found her out for being pregnant. Tyrion points out that Daenerys isn’t a foreign whore who can be abducted, beaten up or intimidated, because of her blood and non-D.

But as @lasophus points out this (not this actually, violent death, usually via crossbow / arrow penetration) has happened to literally every other lowblood foreign whore (Ros Shae Ygritte Osha), plus all the lesbians. But not Daenerys! But Cersei Plannister has a plan. She doesn’t kill Tyrion because of blood / because otherwise the dragons and the dothraki and the unsullied would torch the city. She plays him instead.

Scene Seven:

Daenerys: I can’t have children

Jon: *hip thrust* oh really, let me introduce you to this gentleman here, I call him The Dragon

Daenerys: *swoons*

Scene Eight: I think Sansa was always playing LF but also kind of also knew he was her only friend and the only person who approached understanding her, but then her brother explained to her that LF was super betraying her so she had to kill him whoops getting ahead of myself

Scene Nine: Since diarising a meeting between Daenerys and The Dragon Jon in this war strategy meeting is looking at her with the disrespectful pout/halfsmile of the total lad who knows he’s about to get laid, and they arrange to take a ship up to the north together despite the danger because they have a very BUSY schedule.

Scene Ten: Jon lifts a finger to be on Theon’s recovery team, by telling him that it’s ok to follow his blood and save his sister.

Scene Eleven: Theon wins a fight and assumes his bloodright as sea prince by virtue of not having a penis. He staggers out into the surf and is rebaptised in the cold salty water as destiny music plays. I guess actually some cephalopods don’t have penises.

Scene Twelve: Sansa stands in a snowstorm making a difficult decision: yes she is going to go ahead with it. She gets flunkies to bring her sister to the Great Hall, and there, in front of all the ballachingly obstreperous northern lords, explains how LF has been the villain all along (via Bran’s magical insights). “How do you answer these charges ....... Lord Baelish???”, she reveals, as our prayers for Arya turn into a globe-spanning cry of BAZINGA!! It was us who underestimated the girls all along, and believed in their fights when actually they were just putting it on for the benefit of the spy at the keyhole and the viewer at home!!

“I deny it! None of you were there to see what happened,” LF says, no longer himself but just a plot toy setting himself up for Bran to coolly recollect that actually he was there to see it and all other things; an accusation based on magic which the northern lords don’t have any reason to believe in but which still floors our arch-manipulator to his knees, begging for his life. “Thank you for all your many lessons, Lord Baelish,” Sansa says to her friend and teacher, weeping, then delivers the nod to Arya, who slits his throat. As his blood spills we may reflect on how LF has been dead since the beginning of the season.

LF is of low blood and uses his tongue not his dick, so we do not have room for him any more. LF makes the plot diverge off in weird complicated directions, so we do not have room for him any more.

He killed Ros though

BAZINGA

Scene Thirteen: Another one of those tricksy bitches and Sansa’s other teacherenemy Cersei Lannister reveals the Plannister to Dummbister Jaime: just wait in the south until all the enemies have marched north to turn into an army of wights (which then maybe Qyburn could do something about or maybe I don’t care because “I’ll do anything to protect my family” is just madbitch speak for “I am now aligned with the forces of death”). Jaime is not with the programme because He Made a Promise and is aligned with the forces of the living after Brienne+Jaime met up and she worked her customary powers on his moral fibre. Despite basically giving the order to kill him Cersei flubs it at the last minute and Jaime walks away from her, finally choozing the right floozy, as Cersei makes an impotent I’m-not-evil-enough-yet fist.

Then we have a really nice and eerie snow scene where a christmas-y version of the title song plays and King’s Landing gets dusted with white. Winter coming maybe can be nice or cause people to do good things because of christmas?? I fucking love christmas!

Scene Fourteen: Sam’s initial reaction to Bran telling him he became the three-eyed raven is the kind of “Oh!” you’d give your kid if it told you it made friends with a stegosaur in school that day, but then has the wits to ask the follow-up question which has thusfar eluded other characters: “I don’t know what that means?”, and Bran delivers a semi-coherent explanation, representing, together with his material use to the case against LF, marked progress from the days when he was just scaring and upsetting people. Why is Bran so intent on telling Jon that he’s actually Aegon Targaryen, the true heir to the Iron Throne and D’s nephew, when he is, just this precise moment, eagerly performing eagerly-anticipated activities with D on a ship?? In these circs it seems like it would just be upsetting news which could threaten an alliance pleasant to both parties and vital to humanity. Whose side is Bran on?

Scene Fifteen: This conversation, “does it bother you that I’m the Lady of Winterfell”, “no obviously not let me introduce myself”, “I never could have survived what you survived, not like what I said in front of LF that one time”, feels like their first make-up-and-closure chat, which makes it seem like they weren’t pretending the whole time. Unbazinga.

(Direwolf thoughts: Sansa’s direwolf is dead and she’s totally different to how she was before and also not so much of a Stark (she didn’t swing the sword though she passed the sentence; she rules LF/Cersei-wise not starkly); Bran’s wolf died (at the moment his three-eyed-raven skills got transferred into him) and now being Bran is just one memory amongst millions of others; Arya’s is alive and thriving and she is the same as always and thriving; Jon’s is for all we know still alive and ditto (D got his chilly post-dead juices heated up again); Rickon’s wolf died and then he did.)

Scene Sixteen: Oh yeah, the ice dragon. Seems everyone this episode, including this recapper, just had too much darn stuff on their plates to mention to each other about you know how the White Walkers can reanimate corpses - people, bears, horses, giants, so on, he has a fucking ice dragon now obviously, climate change has nuclear weapons now obviously, everything is fucked, obviously.

[theowlsarenotwhattheyremembers]

Episode 6: Beyond the Wall

Well that was depressing. Game of Thrones has been building its lush crenellated plots-and-characters-and-places edifice towards a zenith for so many seasons and books and decades, but, now it’s wandering off the battlements and in the freefall of internet-pleasing fanfic: #stillrunning #dontcallmedany #thinkofthechildren #jonaerys

Anyway I am too moist for analysis so see the LARB’s recaps for all the insight you’ll need, I’m just going to gush right Scene One: looks cold there m’boys, nice glacier, cute wildlings you’ve got there, or are they dothraki in wildling coats?

Doesn’t really matter, they’re just there to leap into frame just in time to catch the enemy’s death blow that for a second there we thought might get a named character. Now this is completely fine because look there’s an explanation all these guys have been saved from death, in five cases by or in circs relating to the Lord of Light, so what you have to understand here is that it’s only unnamed, winter-hat-wearing nobodies who get killed because they don’t have magic backup to save them from death, that’s why all that okay. So that’s fine but why are they up there sshh

Oh the Big Woman + Tormund haha, look we appreciate that unwomanly women can be attractive too, ahaha, #wokeGoT #butch4butch cuuute

ZOMBIE ICE BEAR haha wow holy fuck why did you say you were up here again sshh

Oh yeah before that Scene Two: Arya is a misogynist now. See this is how it works: individual women can break away from the patriarchy by e.g. attending assassin college and becoming face-stealing badass stonecold killers, but, then when they meet up with their sister fresh out of a rape-n-domestic-abuse shaped character arc, busy building relationships and getting grain stores together and socially reproducing the north / the first line of defence against the armies of death, they don’t necessarily have anything invested in the sisterhood any more, because they pursued their dreams by embracing masculinity, which is totally cool if that’s your jam you do you, but, just because you’re not like all the other girls doesn’t mean you get to be a misogynist towards them. “I’m just like a boy and even got dad’s approval for being a boy and got to be a boy by being better at being a boy than all the boys, which was really hard and involved surviving lots of abuse and trauma, but I survived and overcame because I’m a boy, whereas you just sit around looking pretty, you fucking little slut,” explains Arya, and instead of saying, “shut the fuck up you sexist idiot and recognise that I’ve had my own fucking character arc too and it took me from being fanunfave unwoke stupid femme to being #queeninthenorth #sansasnark, and as Sarah in LARB explains, wielding feminine power of the kind both you and the showrunners fail to really understand / deal with, because you think you’re feminists but you can’t any of you imagine what feminine power looks like without recoiling and calling us, me Cersei and Cousin D, mad power-crazed bitches who need Jon, Jaime or Tyrion to wind us back” - instead of saying that, Sansa kind of shrugs and looks scared, while Littlefinger, of whom these zany girlies are his jerking marionettes, looks on.

Scene Three: herooooes zomg bear, &c, also Beric faithsplains Jon’s already existing Protector of The Realms of Men and Their Brimming Knickers values to him/us. D’awww <3

Scene Four: Oh but yeah before the bear Daenerys is like heroes are stupid, let’s not be heroes, let’s be cool and Tyrion is like great perfect well let’s get drafting the new Broken Wheel westerosi democracy constitution and Daenerys is like DON’T WAKE THE DRAGON IN MY BRIMMING KNICKERS BITCH, IT’S NO PHALLUS BUT IT DOES SPIT FIRE, and Tyrion is like sigh is it that time of the month.

Scene Five: ZOMG BEAR

Scene Six: Littlefinger: “Brienne is here to protect you and Arya turn to her for advice sweet Sansa about how to manage this unfortunate turn of events re your violent compassionless shell of a sister you always hated”, Sansa: “hmm yes Brienne Arya’s only friend sworn to protect her yes interesting thanks L my mistrust in you is forgotten”

Scene Seven: lol our drunk heroes #justthedrunkest cool the Lord of Light has arranged for there to be just the right mini group of wights and White Walker for us to learn about the kill-the-one-who-turned-them thing, but he didn’t turn the one for our bag, great great great, #mission #accomplished #bagitandlegit, but wait, there’s more plot to be done! The Lord of Light directs the band of heroes to a rock in an ice lake for them to hide out from a bit of the army of the dead on (the bit sans the giants, mammoths, Thenns, other beastlies from beyond the wall etc) and scowl at the Night King and come up with a cute #forkintheroad of the otherwise ramrod straight and true hurtling plot javelin we’re all riding atop nowadays: what if Beric and Jon, because they’re both immortal but don’t want to be, ran over to the Night King for a heroic Lord of Light sponsored Last Stand and took him (kill him and you kill all of them!!!!!) down with them!!! No but we’ve got one episode and one season left to go. Don’t worry though Gendry, the raven and Daenerys will only be 3 shakes of a lamb’s tail, and heroes don’t die of exposure, cept the least important one.

Scene Eight: Bye Brienne, girls don’t get to have friends ;D. But don’t worry babe you can totally advance Jaime’s choozy the floozy character arc while you’re down there, because what else are we bitches here for lol

Scene Nine: Daenerys seriously you’ll feel better tomorrow when your pmt breaks!! Hormones can make you so emosh that you’re willing to sacrifice potentially your own life and that of all 3 dragons to rescue your crush from the death errand I told you to send him on!! Don’t worry Tyrion, u know we’re v unlikely to die in the penultimate episode of the penultimate season ;D

Also (and this is a legitimate point): Do you think I got this fit-and-flare white power (oops) fur coat made for nothing

Scene Ten:

Well I guess in a way this wasn’t TOTALLY one for the fans because we’ve all been screaming BBQ THE DEAD at our laptops since S01E10, and turns out that is only a limitedly efficacious / actually counterproductive plan bcs of zombie ice dragon possibilities. DON’T WORRY THOUGH GUYS if Jon Snow can survive being actually dead he can totally survive drowning in icy waters while being attacked by zombies and then climbing out of an ice pool in a blizzard!! How likely is it really that the Night King riding over the Wall on an ice dragon is going to freeze the world to death given the good grace of R'Hllor?  

Right this bit with Benjen: what happened was Bran the Three-Eyed raven summoned him, like he also did last season. Everything that happened beyond the wall totally had a plottight explanation, apart from the issue of why any of it happened in the first place, beyond plot advancement, which is only resolvable by our indomitable wills as undying fans #therealarmyofthedead

Did you think that Jon’s jerky zomboid motion when he clambered freezing out from under the ice meant he was a wight now too?? Me either haha

Scene Eleven: Sansa gets an inkling of just how strong Arya’s death magic is, but because both girls are being juggled between the triple hands of trauma, Littlefinger, and internalised misogyny, the Queen in the North receives this only as a bloodchilling threat, which is also is from Arya’s perspective too.

Scene Twelve: Jon, naked, calls Daenerys Dany (blunder) and My Queen (winner), they unite against the Night King and not this time but v soon doubtlessly, with their genitals. All this transpires very aptly aboard a ship.

Scene Thirteen: Teams of wights drag up from beneath the ice the real reason why Jon and Jorah needed to go up beyond the wall in the first place: the Night King’s new dragon. Zoinks!

#gotcap

[theowlsarenotwhattheyremembers]

Episode Five: Eastwatch

Scene One: Jaime we discover is actually some balloons, and has thereby floated in a lateral direction away from the dragon and certain capture and safely over to the other side of the river, bobbing along in his armour like a steel-plated lilo. Bronn, his bff, swam alongside him, and together the pair washed up in the still-gorgeous evening. Bronn is concerned that Jaime might be suicidally depressed, and counsels him not check out before settling his account with Bronn, which after last week is of heroic magnitude. Jaime can’t hear him because he is sensibly too terrified of dragons for other considerations.

Scene Two: Meanwhile Tyrion is pacing in horror through the still-flaming pompeiiscape that moments ago was a nice grassy plain, having thoughts which we can only presume are along the lines of the earnest moral speculation which concluded last week’s recap. The tiny, ashen remains of the defeated army trudge towards their vast and terrible new overlord, who is preening atop a small wooded hill. Daenerys delivers a speech about how she is going to not murder them, break the wheel, be the change you want to see, etc, high in concept but low in believability because the gist is serve me or be burned alive, which feels a lot like exactly like those slaver/mad king vibes which we had been wanting to get away from. Randall and Quarterback Dickon aren’t going to bend the knee so those characters bite the literal dust, mourned not for who they were, but what their deaths indicated in terms of Daenerys’ character development, i.e. bad turn.

Not the change you want to see in the world.

Scene Three: Cersei is on too sweet a eudaimonic kick to listen to depressing military facts. She reckons she can trick her way out of any inconveniences using her rage, guile n gold. Maybe she can!

Scene Four: Jon is brooding scenically on a cliff when Drogon pops by for a snuggle. Daenerys looks a bit worried

- is one of my demon fire monsters going to snack on my crush? - but it all ends in a hearty flirt. Then Jorah swings by just at the right moment for Jon to dodge a direct question about whether he’s undead or not! For some reason Jon doesn’t take the opportunity to be grateful however.

Scene Five: Bran is just tripping basically, sees ravens, gets seen by the Night King again, wakes up, yells something incoherent about ravens, the maester hurries off to send a psychedelic message to all the lords in Westeros.

Scene Six: Archmaester Broadbent is however inclined to take this missive seriously thanks to Sam?

Scene Seven: Varys and Tyrion are depressed and drinking in the throne room about Daenerys’ mad king turn, with Bran’s ravings doing nothing to lighten the mood.

Scene Eight: Jon reads that his dead little sister and brother are actually alive but will be actually undead soon so he needs to go home and join them. This is a not great plan. How about another not great plan, suggests Tyrion: go beyond the wall, sneak up on a wight, bag it, enrol it in a sort of mini-cirque de nuit and get it to perform in front of all the relevant queens until they are disturbed enough to stop the war and fight climate change?! Everyone agrees and scurries off to implement this madness aqap, even though Daenerys looks a shade triste about how her newest crush and her oldest friend are both zipping off to face desperate odds / certain death in a icy black magic hell all because she is enjoying war with Cersei too much to pause to save the world and thereby solve the hearts and minds issue, really hanging in the balance at this point, conclusively.

Scene Nine: The Northern Lords, or the Northern Bores as we might call them, after making up the anti-statecraft doomed title ‘King in the North’ and foisting it on a poor gloomy lad who after all was only trying to help, are now inventing all kinds of unreasonable stipulations associated with the role, including onerous The North Only travel restrictions. They are about to mob-elect Sansa King in the North just for sticking around and having sensible policies regarding grain and lagging, but she politely demurrs. Arya has learned so much in her brief, brutal life, but sadly not statecraft, and also not how to be awful around her sister. I know how it feels Arya, I can’t resist fighting with my sister whenever I see her like we’re thirteen again, but for christssake all we’re ruining is a family holiday, you’re ruining Sansa’s reign, the most sensible the Seven Kingdoms has ever seen.

Scene Ten: Davos and Tyrion pop down King’s Landing for some back of a fag packet diplomacy. Jaime Balloons tries to be angry with Tyrion for killing his dad and being primary advisor to his feared enemy who just incinerated his army and his newest jock chum Dickon, but the poor thing just doesn’t have the heart for it these days, and listens dumbly to Tyrion’s truce proposition.

Scene Eleven: Davos fetches Gendry, who has grown a whole lotta heart since we last saw him when he was a bit boring and scared all the time from all his then-raw traumas,  now all healed up into a peppy young thing with his dad’s lack of interest in thinking things through and leaping enthusiasm for war.

Scene Twelve: Davos does a brilliant routine on Kevin Eldon (having recently switched careers from Braavosi thesp to King’s Landing Guard One) and Guard Two, who he charms (along with the viewer at home) with gold, mock outrage and seafood viagra. Davos is holding us all in the palm of his hand and we’re licking it up until Tyrion shows up and ruins it for everyone but Gendry, whose burly young arms get to brain Eldon and Two with his lovely new warhammer.

Scene Thirteen: Cersei, blooming with power, already knows everything about the meeting with Tyrion and everything else important, is excited for Bronn’s punishment, is pregnant and is glad to let the father know in deathchill tones that further betrayals are not advised.

Scene Fourteen: Gendry, brimming with pep, introduces himself to Jon as the rightful king’s son and calls him short. What a lad! They agree to fight side by side forever / a scene or two till they get shivved by the dead. Davos is a bit frustrated about people ignoring all his longevity tips but Davos the season is almost over and the viewer at home has barely been blooded yet, we need death else we’ll switch off and go back to our yoga classes / twitter / pastel swoons / whatever other degeneracy.

Daenerys and Jon have a final flirt before he and Jorah sail off to arctic death. Will she bother rescuing them from their gallantry with her dragons?

Scene Fifteen: Sam wisely interrupts Gilly before she can complicate everything even more by finding out that Jon is actually the rightful heir to the throne because he’s the trueborn son of the previous heir, Rhaegar Targaryen, so has stronger dibs than Aunt Dany because of the patriarchy. Shut up Gilly! Sam then whips himself up into an impotent fury and quits university after stealing all the most interesting-seeming books from the library. Sam, we’ve all been there, but, again, your life is more important than mine and I am concerned that you are making poorly thought out choices. That line about reading about the achievements of better men is straight from your dad, who was wrong about everything to his dying, immolated breath, also think about the nice life Baby Sam is having in the nice warm well-defended Citadel.

Scene Sixteen: Littlefinger plays Arya, it’s very sad to watch. Why is Sansa allowing that viper to roam around Winterfell hatching plots and stoking mutinies? In the end the letter Arya found was only that one Sansa was forced to write to Robb telling him to surrender back when she was being violently abused by Joffrey, I find it hard to believe that even someone in the throes of back-at-mum-and-dad’s-house regression/trauma would let herself get worked up about it. Also you’d have liked to be able to hope that Bran, who really does know anything, could just set things straight, but he is really too fried to be helpful. Dear oh dear.

Scene Seventeen: Our band of desperadoes are already up at the wall and explaining the bad plan to Tormund, who’s a maniac so he’s obviously game. They meet up with the Hound and Thoros of Myr and Beric Dondarrion, who are chilling in the cells in very literal terms. Everyone bickers and makes up again and heads out of one of those tunnels which have still yet to be blocked up, it’s almost as if they want an undead giant to be able to boot its way through like a halfbrick through a shoji screen.

All our named gang here apart from Tormund are, interestingly, people who have either cheated death or been brought back from the literal dead, or a wizard who brings people back from the dead, and the Lord of Light has shown a personal interest in most of them. Hmm! Off they go for some swashbuckling in the snow.

#gotcap

[theowlsarenotwhattheyremembers]

Episode Four: The Spoils of War

After this episode my watching companion had to hold me in his arms and cradle me for some time as I shook and howled with physical overwhelm. This show has overwhelmed me mentally and emotionally all season, and now I am bodily overwhelmed as well, all my defences are ashes, JUST LIKE THOSE LANNISTERS

Friends

Let us

Excavate

Cast ourselves back to that far away time when I still had what had hitherto been passing for my mind

Scene One: I literally have no idea hold on while I load up VLC

HAHAHA those pricks they all deserve to die Bronn take the money and run boy Jaime’s got nothing for you his heart was thieved and turned to sad coal by the deathlord on the iron throne, his soul’s only hope is to hightail up to winterfell and fall at Brienne’s feet, anything short of that and that life force / moral compass / holy spirit is going to turn to bile hacked up on a dark winter morning heaped black in your lap glistening cold and horrid like your sweated dreams

Scene Two: Cersei curls her lip at the incarnation of capitalism who’s hanging round the red keep atm like a misplaced fart and is in fucking league with the twats in the masks in Essos who Daenerys suppressed with new times religion and dragon fire they’re coming for you too you gimlet eyed member. Cersei is going to give him all the Highgarden gold she stole which would otherwise have been spent on lutes and sex parties

Scene Three: Littlefinger tries to manipulate Bran, but Bran has kind of transcended ‘way ahead of you’ and is not Bran and … finger love you are further out of your depth than a one-handed man in plate armour in a lake

Bran upsets Meera, who has the wits to realise he’s dead and the thing talking to her is metaphysical. Meera is an enormous hero; why hasn’t she even been given a bath and a nice new set of clothes like everyone else has? Sansa what are you doing?

Meera leaves for the Reed palace, which from my voyages in AWOIF I understand is like a treehouse kingdom but in a swamp and moves around; further afield on the internet, people speculate that maybe the Reeds use the same techniques as the Uros developed to evade the Incas:

The Uros use the totora reed […] to make their homes, their furniture, their boats, and the islands they live on. Their boats, which are shaped like canoes, but with animal heads at the prow, are used for fishing and to bring visitors out to the islands, which are usually moored to the bottom of the lake, but can be moved if necessary.

Scene Four: Arya’s home!!! Oh my lord my heart is the size of of a basking shark. She and Sansa embrace! It’s so lovely but they still really don’t like each other and I worry that they will find it even harder to understand each other’s different struggles now one’s a magic assassin and the other’s queen in the north. Bran seems to find it pleasant to see her but that might just be confusion because he observed her make an unexpected decision at the inn at the crossroads to follow the path of family for a bit before returning to the path of kill Cersei. It’s just wonderful seeing the kids all together, Brienne’s heart swells, Littlefinger’s mouth rotates ninety degrees in an inscrutable rictus.

Scene Five: Daenerys and Jon flirt in a cave. When they come out and get told about the unfortunate situation with the Unsullied and so on, she is really upset and turns to her crush for advice who backs up Tyrion’s hearts and minds campaign, it’s hard for me to disagree despite Queen of Thorns wisdom because I’m a prisoner of modern reason not a heroic agent of world-historical destiny.

Scene Six: Arya, all scary hair grease and basically first sword of Braavos, fights Brienne, best swordsman in Westeros, this is more like a sexy dance than a sword fight, sword fighting is usually really boring but I’m leaping around and whooping with delight, they smile at each other and everyone is so full of joy

until Arya says she was taught by ‘no-one’ and does Brienne know what that means? Are the Stark kids all too weird now to be a pack? Why is Sansa scowling so much? Is it because Arya is so frightening? Does that weird bottom lip movement mean that Littlefinger is scared too? Why does Arya look so sad at the end? Everyone is popping off lingering looks filled with unspoken meaning that I don’t know what it is.

Scene Seven: Davos and Jon are both crushing on Daenerys, but Davos has better grammar. Then Theon comes back! Jesus how many reunions do we have left to us, this is not at all good for my health. “I didn’t know you were here [I killed your brothers but didn’t but did sack your castle but then went through experiences which destroyed my personality which I am trying my hardest to make into personal growth and I saved your sister] where’s the queen?”

Scene Eight: So we know exactly where she is she is in the most exciting battle in the history of the most exciting tv ever. Dothraki in an open field is an extremely beautiful and terrifying thing but then they are upstaged by A DRAGON!!!!! Why isn’t Daenerys wearing more armour???? Oh my FUCKING GOD!!!!

Now my gallant viewing partner who was putting up with all my screaming, shaking and weeping thinks that the dragon is like a mala in se evil in itself weapon like napalm or mustard gas, I’m too starry-eyed to agree if the dragon is deployed in a kind of proportionate or targeted way, but what we can all agree unfortunately is that that destruction of all the harvest from the most productive region in Westeros right before the Long Night is not a plan in keeping with not being queen of the ashes.

A very poor strategy medium term.

And but that doesn’t even address the anxieties which were stopping me from sleeping afterwards, one of which was if Bronn managed to shoot down Drogon with just one scorpion and two shots, what are they going to do in subsequent battles when there are like 15? But then, is it okay to set entire enemy armies on fire? Is this a just war? This isn’t a just war. Only going north and torching the army of the dead would make it a just war. This is like the very bad and destructive of harvests War of the Five Kings, which traumatised Arya so much, but more horrifying. Could they teach the dragons ethics? Do dragons have moral reasoning? This battle was too overwhelming to think ethically about the first and second times but  on the third watch it does seem to me that the Dragonstone team need to gather an ethics council.

Also does this mean that Jaime is captured again now??? How awkward that will be with him having freed Tyrion before and Tyrion having subsequently killed Tywin and Jaime is having a soul crisis at the moment, look this is all just too much

#gotcap

[theowlsarenotwhattheyremembers]

Episode Three: The Queen’s Justice

Look I’m going to jack in this recapping business, how are you supposed to recap this. Everything is happening immediately. We’re all baby three-eyed ravens now, seeing everything at once with no way to cope or understand. After the episode ends I have the same distant stare, nothing expressible behind the eyes. I am terrible company, my boyfriend tries to have a conversation, I have nothing to say. All I have left to me is to try to write my way out of this emotional prison.

Scene One: I can’t remember this far back in my life. Too much has happened to me. Oh yeah that was fucking it, after leaving Winterfell Jon Snow was immediately getting on with unfurling yet another moment that we have all been waiting six seasons for: the three most main characters standing in Daenerys’ modern gothic / Valyrian brut front room debating climate change and flirting.

Daenerys is favouring hype and self belief mantras, Davos is flying under the radar with a charming ‘this guy is all substance and no style’ approach while Jon pouts furiously, and a few seconds later they have won mining rights to the castle’s foundations and two much-needed baths, with an exciting potential captivity twist.

Scene I forgot to number: Varys and Melisandre have a veiled threats off which Melisandre wins because she’s a witch who can predict the future or at least pretend to

Scene I forgot to number II: It would be nice if people took Theon’s PTSD recovery more seriously, but the Iron Born are tenaciously the most unreconstructed and worst house.

Scene Two: Ugh fuck. How long before this pudding-faced goth prat’s star falls and Yara decapitates him before -

Scene Three: - crashing through the door with the antidote to save the Last of the Sand Snakes?? Doesn’t anyone else believe in the Last of the Sand Snakes’ right to live, and to become everything she and her sisters maybe were in the books or something and more? On the other hand, poison pink lipgloss is definitely the cutest assassination method. Lick my lips bitch you’re dead toodles

Scene Four: As Cersei consolidates her Bitch Overlord success is the sweetest revenge served cold empire, Jaime is looking increasingly old? Or at least in need of some shine to come back into his eyes that have seen so much and yet so little at the same time. Shine like when he sees Brienne you get me. Cersei smooching him moments after smooching the Last Sand Snake to death is not a promising foreshadow however. In the meantime he’s an aristocratic jock getting a blowjob from the Queen so let’s not weep too hard.

Scene Four Point Five the Morning After: Jaime is lovingly watching Cersei sleep the blissful sleep of one whose enemies are safely tucked away in the torture dungeons. A knock at the door and Cersei wakes so refreshed and full of the morning’s promise she decides to go public with Twincest, while Jaime flomps back into the pillow.

Scene Five: Cersei, yet to break stride in her victory lap, uses an Iron Bailiff to pick her teeth.

Scene Six: Oh yeah this is when Jon gets the mining rights and a pep talk, and then it cuts to Tyrion matchmaking openly “a more productive relationship” fuck you Tyrion, and then Jon and Daenerys flirt on the cliff, and Daenerys gives Jon a crushing-hard look as he storms smolderingly off up the steps. Is post-dead Jon capable of crushes? Or only sulking?

Scene Seven: Up north Littlefinger is coaching Sansa in how to overthink everything and worst-scenario plan instead of sleeping. “Fight every battle, everywhere, always, in your mind” seems like a recipe for casting off from reality and subliming off into a night sky of red unsleeping eyes. Can Sansa not give Littlefinger an alternative helpful task to do, there must be a lot of useful things to do, grain storage logistics, crocheting winterwear, weatherproofing etc etc

Bran arrives! Everyone has been scattered asunder for so many long harsh seasons of character development, bringing them back together again is a massive treat each time. Bran is now however a whacked out astral soothsayer and has nothing helpful to say for the time being, only “do you remember that time you were raped, must have been such a bummer?” Also answering “it’s difficult to explain” to every question is not helpful. Bran I hope the Winterfell tree helps you along in your wizard training esp presentation skills because at the moment you are a hindrance.

Scene Eight: Finally Sam and Jorah provide some comic relief in what is otherwise a oh so-hot n heavy (with plot advancement) episode. “I assumed it was the rest that did it … and the climate” as Sam blinked encouragingly along is probably one of the best things Jorah has ever said, a low bar but this blog takes a distance-travelled approach.

Scene Nine: Scene Nine was basically two entire decisive battle montages, one narrated by Tyrion, the other barely even shown, possibly because the Tyrells are too much fun to really bother with “an army”, “military drills” etc preferring to spend their time on cake, flower appreciation and bum sex. They were in short the best family, they are all dead now.

Scene Ten: Olenna waltzes off the mortal plane gulping wine and delivering icy burns in her gorgeous French Renaissance drawing room. She reads Jaime like a book of doggerel written by children about their favourite sports teams, but nevertheless manages to derive succour in her final moments by telling him that she killed Joffrey.

Who will stop the relentless rout of the rebellion at land and sea, not to mention that of this recapper’s ability to keep up with or even remember what happened??

#gotcap

[theowlsarenotwhattheyremembers]

Episode Two: Stormborn

The attitude towards killing off characters here before they actually get to do anything interesting invites reflection of the terrible aptness of the gamer term ‘wasted’ to refer to a death.

But reader let us begin at the beginning.

Scene 1: The weather in winter-has-come Westeros is miserable, and Daenerys is cabin feverish in her new storm-whipped angular rock palace. She has a go at Varys for his key role in the plot to assassinate her in season one, which initially is awkward but then he gets self-righteous and delivers a speech about being the People’s Spook which wins over everyone’s hearts and minds again.

Honestly the Khaleesei has such a dream team around her, it makes me feel anxious. When is a traitor / assassin / magic monster / other issue going to arise and sneeze on everyone’s dessert? Probably soon and also to an extent in this very episode, the snake being that penis Euron.

Then they all go into the throne room and Melisandre is standing there between Daenerys and the throne!

It’s like Melisandre is receiving Daenerys in the throne room and not the other way around, which is very awkward and seems like it could be foreshadowing about the Red Priestesses getting out of hand like Cersei’s Sparrows? Tbh I am also concerned about the Dothraki too who hardly seem likely to bring harmony to Westeros, devoted as they are to rape and pillage. Could the Dothraki be persuaded to settle down as gentle farmspeople of the Reach? This seems unlikely. Yet mass deporting them back to the steppe seems neither feasible nor fair on everyone else who lives there, who are probably now entering into an unprecedented age of peace, prosperity and cultural flourishing. Daenerys is a magical dragon queen and Varys and Tyrion are the best statecrafters in Westeros probably, but are their skills a match for the religious fire witches of Asshai AND the Dothraki AND the Army of the Dead AND all of Westeros’ more standard-issue intractable problems? We will find out, but for now Melisandre substantially moves the plot along by telling Daenerys that she absolutely must meet this northern hunk Jon Snow. “Sounds like quite a man,” says Daenerys, probably filling the tall sails of Dany/Jon fantasists with merry gusting hope; but, further to my concerns about Daenerys’ already too dreamy team, plus how boring Skyrim is once you reach high levels, I hope your sails turn to rags sorry. Game of Thrones is about the joy of not getting what you want. There is no point complaining. Melisandre understands that more is less so doesn’t mention anything at all about Jon apart from some vague stuff about the prince/ss who was promised and wildlings and so on. 

Daenerys says she’ll send Jon an invitation to visit and “bend the knee,” confirming the sinking feeling everyone had when we all heard those fatefully inconvenient words, “the King in the North”: good for the morale of people who live too far north to be comfortable / clean most of the time; bad for every other objective.

Scene 2: Jon, Sansa and Davos are already reading Daenarys’ letter, because this plot waits for no raven. Davos, genius of his age, notes the radiantly obvious fact that fire-breathing dragons will be of great use against an army of ice demons who only die by means of 1. rare materials and 2. fire. They all agree that Jon actually going and securing the dragons to save the world would be too dangerous, however.

Scene 3: Cersei lists an array of tediously one-sided facts about Daenerys’ atrocity record to date, larded with some unnecessary racism. The sanctimonious southern lords assembled all duly listen in prim horror. Jaime tries to poach Sam’s dad from the Tyrells using more racism, a good strategy with Sam’s dad.

Scene 4: Jorah’s grayscale is looking absolutely terrible. 

The Archmaester scolds him for not cutting off his own arm immediately, but because he’s an aristocrat gives him the opportunity to commit suicide before shipping him off to a decade or so of frenzied madness in Valyria. Westerosi best practice of sending crazed grayscale victims off to roam the wilderness seems questionable from an epidemiological perspective, but what do I know.

Scene 5: Creepy kindly wrongun Qyburn shows Cersei his new spear-crossbow, and impresses her by getting her to shoot it at a centuries-old, already-cracked dragon skull, against which it works wonderfully effectively.

How punchably excited Joffrey would be if he was alive! His mum looks quite pleased too.

Scene 6: Tyrion explains to the Southern and Western Ladies of Westeros how this war is going to go. They’re going to do a hearts-and-minds war with minimal use of foreigners in key optics locations, thereby preserving the country as something more than ashes (Daenerys repeats a line here about being queen of the ashes that Tyrion used earlier). Tyrion is saving the Dothraki to pillage his own ancestral seat! What a guy. Olenna points out that the hearts-and-minds strategy didn’t work out for Maergery, something I too am yet to process emotionally. In a one-on-one Olenna counsels Daenerys that war is permanent and to ignore clever men. Thanks Olenna!

Scene 7: Missandei and Grey Worm, two extremely emotionally scarred yet preternaturally attractive young things, share a scene whose tenderness is am I right in saying unrivalled in GoT history? Grey Worm’s lines about Missandei being his weakness are not what anyone used to talking to people in informal settings would call smooth, but this poor young man is like 75% scar tissue, and anyway Missandei calls him on it and refuses to take “you know what I mean” for an answer. She has prepared for this moment by wearing a dress you can undo by pulling a cord, and after pushing Grey Worm to develop greater levels of emotional literacy they go to bed and have a fulfilling experience together despite their tragic pasts and Grey Worm’s absent genitals. In fact,

"Sir Richard Burton, in his travels, wrote about the eunuchs of Mecca and talked about them being sexually active with their wives. When we had the rise of the Italian castrati, who were castrated usually between the ages of 10 and 12, we have a number of them attempting to marry, and a legal brief from the Church in 1718 said that they shouldn’t be allowed to because eunuchs are too tempting to women. ‘They are more esteemed by lewd women because they can give them all the satisfaction without any risk or danger of pregnancy.’"

The scene is extremely affecting good god

Scene 8: Is that Missandei’s hand grasping a bedpost no it’s the Archmaester getting a badly written history book off the shelves what is wrong with you. The Archmaester is going to write A Record of the Wars Following the Death of King Robert Baratheon, First of His Name. Sam suggests a more “poetic” title. This scene is further confirmation of the fan theory that Sam wrote A Song of Ice and Fire.

Sam says he can maybe cure Jorah, the Archmaester tells him he can’t without probably catching greyscale. We cut to Jorah writing a suicide letter to Daenerys, but then Sam comes around with a trolleyful of hope and crude surgical equipment, and goes ahead and very kindly and politely peels off Jorah’s skin. Sam, is there not a facemask in the Citadel? After the Archmaester’s warning this seems excessively rash and virulent pus eye squirting seems extremely probable.

Scene 9: The show’s cruel hatred for the viewer at home is confirmed by this cut. 

But Game of Thrones forgiveness springs eternal in this recapper’s heart - look, there’s Hotpie!

The appearance of her homely old friend, together with his revelation that Winterfell is Stark again and Jon Snow is its king, gets those unending hope jets spurting too: maybe Arya’s life could end up not being entirely unremittingly without friendship, solace, love? 

Scene 10: Jon immediately scotches our reunion at Winterfell hopes by making the sensible decision to leave for Dragonstone after all in. He also makes the sensible decision to leave Sansa in charge of the north, which I guess she looks okay with? King in the North is a bit of a poisoned chalice to be passing on and he did just say he neither wanted it nor asked for it.

Then Littlefinger goes down to annoy Jon while he’s attempting some quiet reflection at Ned’s grave. To Littlefinger, Jon says: “you don’t belong down here”, “I have nothing to say to you”, and [strangling him] “touch my sister and I’ll kill you myself”. Were these the intended outcomes of this conversation for Littlefinger? I guess Littlefinger doesn’t always have a masterplan and is possibly just looking for an opportunity to worm up the old chaos ladder on which he may temporarily have misplaced his footing?

Scene 11: Was that Nymeria?? Arya says “That’s not you”, which made me think the reason why the wolves leave is because she wargs them or something? 

Scene 12: Just as Yara and Ellaria are about to strike up a beautiful friendship, Euron ruins everything by firebombing the Ironborn fleet.

This was a sad scene in which as mentioned above two thirds of the Sand Snakes got massacred after only perfunctory wielding of their signature weapons. Could the remaining Sand Snake be developed into an interesting Last of the Sand Snakes figure? It seems possible that captivity in the hands of Euron and presumably also Cersei will offer Yara, Ellaria and the Last Sand Snake few character development opportunities, and that they will be gorily sacrificed at the altar of the development of Euron’s character as the new Ramsey, and join Maergery and Ros in a lugubrious chorus of Female Hubris in the sky. Let’s hope for a sexy triple escape instead, during which the Last Sand Snake, shorn of her sisters from whom she was unfortunately formerly indistinguishable, dons characteristics and saves the day.

#gotcap

[theowlsarenotwhattheyremembers]

Episode 1: Dragonstone

Right guys I know you’ll have already watched this but look I only just started this blog and I can’t miss the first episode off also you will benefit from my insights regardless. 

!!!! I have been in a state of extreme agitation all year and I can’t actually cope with the fact that it’s here. I am not emotionally prepared and do not know what I just saw. 

Scene 1: Did everyone else not realise that was Arya and think we were in a flashback? I am so overwhelmed I am just right there in the moment I have no idea what’s about to happen. Then all those ratface (rats are intelligent moral creatures but you know what I mean) Freys start coughing up their own lower organs!! When did Arya learn about poisons? Was her training montage long enough to justify this?? I guess it was! And I know the Freys have deathsentence hospitality karma but baking your sons in a pie and feeding it to you and then dressing up in your corpse and poisoning your entire family - is that an eye for an eye according to whichever god is keeping score in this case? I guess possibly! 

This recap blog is going to have an eye for History and Fable (matters which I know only very modest amounts about but there is google) and the sparknotes on Titus Andronicus on which the pie move is based indicates that it may lead to an ambivalent conclusion:

[After a succession of grisly heinous acts of reciprocal violence, Titus] tricks [Tamora, Queen of the Goths], captures her sons, kills them, and makes pie out of them. He feeds this pie to their mother in the final scene, after which he kills both Tamora and Lavinia, his own daughter. A rash of killings ensue; the only people left alive are Marcus [Titus’ brother], Lucius [Titus’ son], Young Lucius [his son], and Aaron [Tamora’s lover]. Lucius has the unrepentant Aaron buried alive, and Tamora's corpse thrown to the beasts. He becomes the new emperor of Rome.

This does not end well for the pie baker, though I suppose his kin are the ones who ultimately triumph. My male friends will often assume that I, a woman, feel empowered and liberated by the character of Arya, the traumatised magical child murderer. Not so, friends. My favourite liberated Game of Thrones #strongfemalecharacter is the lost unlamented Ros, sex worker from the north invented for TV for the purposes of the early sexposition-heavy plot who voyages down south with the Starks and whose illustrious sex spy career is wastefully cut short by Cunt Joffrey. Ros was working-class woman who fled the north before winter even came, whose talents were picked up by the farsighted Varys and who would have made an incredible Kings Landing player had it not been for the misogyny of Joffrey and the script writers and the twat fans who think the TV has to be like the crappy books which I have not read. Rest in Power Ros, this blog is dedicated to you. 

Anyway I haven’t really recapped anything yet and this blog is already overlong  so let’s get back to it. 

Scene 2: The army of the north are coming!! This is too terrifying, it’s hot outside but I am wrapped in a blanket. There are multiple ice zombie giants as we all knew there would be. Let’s remember that like one living giant almost successfully broke through the gate at Castle Black during the wildling battle ages ago; multiple zombie giants are going to make fucking matchsticks of it no magic required, though they probably also have loads of that, those dragons need to get here pronto. Also why haven’t they iceblocked up the gate like Jon said they should ages ago??

Scene 2.5 (s2 was a vision I guess) Commander Dolorous Edd opens the gate to Meera and Bran, and asks if they are wildlings. Why does it matter? Wildlings can all come in anyway, that’s very much the policy now. Also if anything Bran saying “you were at Hardhome” etc only makes him seem more like a wildling, and a scary one? Anyway, no-one cares / everyone is too spooked to stay outside for long and so thank god poor Meera in particular can have a massive eat and a sleep by the fire. She and her magic and fighting skills have been wasted on being a less effective Hodor / wheelchair substitute, I eagerly anticipate her being given a chance to shine now our kids are back to what passes for civilisation. 

Scene 3: Jon and Sansa are still holding court with the whole Northern gentry from last season. At least all those guys look warm in that nice hall toasting their feet on Winterfell’s famous underfloor heating! That awful bloke from the Vale *googles it* Yohn Royce makes an extremely unreasonable and tactics-free suggestion to demolish some of the last strongholds between them and the wall because of “justice” or whatever. Sansa points out that the castles themselves didn’t commit crimes (top-notch statecraft) but suggests they be given to loyal families to punish treason and reward loyalty. Jon makes a generous decision to let the young Karstarks and Umbers stay in their homes despite their twatty dads, making the good and frankly biblical point that the sons shouldn’t be punished for their fathers’ sins. Sansa is unhappy about this and she is probably a better king than Jon, or rather, I think they are both good kings but need to team up and respect each other, which she is really keen to do but unfortunately is also a woman so this makes things harder for everyone because they have to unlearn misogyny first.

Then she tells Littlefinger who barges in to their important conversation what would make her so happy was if he shut up and fucked off, and not to bother trying to get the last word, she’ll just assume it was clever. Which is a King’s Landing style burn! Please Jon, show that this queen is not wasted on the north. Also please Littlefinger, fuck off and die. 

Scene 4:  I collapsed a couple of bits into one there but I am aware that this is too long already because of my Titus Andronicus and Roslove detour, for which I am unrepentant, tune back in next post for more of the same. ANYWAY, here she is, best villain in GoT. She may be evil, but who wouldn’t be in her position? Cersei marches over a map of Westeros telling Jaime she is already 5 moves ahead of him and has an Armada on the way headed by a man who is desperate to impress her. Everyone thinks Jaime is going to kill her, but might she not kill Jaime? She absolutely has no further fucks to give whatsoever and just wants power and revenge and to die a fabulous drunk old evil empress with ten husbands each more devoted and militarily useful than the last. I hope she dies much sooner than that! I also think she will because she can’t be the one to win the game of thrones. Can she?? Could the alcoholic childless widow of the usurper king really win in the end? She could have more children if she could be bothered probably, if she was in a mood to consider dynastic matters. In this scene, she is not, and is just savouring the prospect of ruling the world asap and as bloodily as you like. 

Scene 5: And here he fucking is! They really did cut down every tree on the Iron Islands! How did they throw this fleet together so quickly! It does not look like they cut corners! Those boats are fucking terrifying!

Is this even scene 5? Cersei and Jaime are immediately there, standing on the balcony, watching Euron’s terrifying Armada approach. Everything is happening extremely fast. This is not like the midseasons when everyone was walking painfully slowly around the Riverlands. Why do they have to get it all over as quickly as possible? Have they run out of money? I am no less overwhelmed than ever.

Scene 6: Thesp Goth Euron woos Cersei by saying she’s the most beautiful woman in the world and promising to give her a priceless gift to get to her woman’s heart. This is very tacky but it kind of confirms her power as actual queen and is a highpoint so far since the nadir of the Walk of Shame. Do you think the wildfire explosion of all the King’s Landing gentry and the Sparrows was the highpoint? Maybe that was the violence highpoint, and this is the statecraft highpoint. Also Euron’s “gift” is going to be more violence, and he also offers up his “two good hands,” at which Jaime, on behalf of us all, recoils. 

Cersei seems likely to graciously accept the first gift before declining the second. Has her Sparrows experience taught her not to unleash forces against her enemies which she then cannot control and which then turn on her? Probably not!

I hate that sleazy prat Euron and can’t believe that Fantasizr drafted him into my Game of Game of Thrones league. Any points I get for him are a badge of shame (I got 15 for this scene). 

Scene 7: Sam stars in music video soup poop library montage! Sam during this is confirmed as the fat nerd with a goatee and slicked back hair avatar of the show’s condescending idea of what a GoT fan looks like, corroborating the theory that Sam is actually the narrator / the Perspective from which the story is seen. Sam nicks some useful books after Jim Broadbent tells him he believes but doesn’t care that the White Walkers and the Long Night are coming. There is science going on in the Citadel, medical science involving weighing organs. This science needs to be more applied. Incidentally everyone, Game of Thrones is not medieval, it is Early Modern:

What Martin actually gives us is a fantasy version of what the historian Alfred Crosby called the Post-Columbian exchange: the globalizing epoch of the 16th and 17th centuries. A world where merchants trade exotic drugs and spices between continents, where professional standing armies can number in the tens or hundreds of thousands, where scholars study the stars via telescopes, and proto-corporations like the Iron Bank of Braavos and the Spicers of Qarth control global trade. It’s also a world of slavery on a gigantic scale, and huge wars that disrupt daily life to an unprecedented degree.

[…] even the medieval aesthetics of the show owes a debt to the 16th and 17th centuries. As any scholar of the The Fairie Queene will tell you, Renaissance literature is replete with tales of chivalry, jousting, dragon-slaying, and magic. Writers from Spencer to Cervantes displayed and abiding fascination with these medieval tropes precisely because they were witnessing their demise. And our modern conception of the Middle Ages, which emerged out of the Victorians’ fascination with Neo-Gothic and Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics, was actually based upon these early modern retellings of medieval life.

So why, outside of dorky pedantry, does any of this matter? Because fantasy worlds are never just fantasy. They appeal to us because they refract our own histories and speak to contemporary interests. George R.R. Martin’s fantasy has grown to enormous popularity in part because of its modernity, not its “medieviality.”

Scene 8: Back at Winterfell, we get to see Tormund’s brilliant face he puts on when he looks at Brienne:

To me this is adorable rather than creepy because though Tormund is a sex pest, it feels like this comes from a place of respect and genuine adoration. Also Brienne could dispatch him devastatingly before he knew what was happening and he absolutely knows it. 

Actually this scene is where Sansa delivers her burn to Littlefinger, but onwards!

Scene 9: The unforgivable casting and all-round existence of Ed Sheeran aside, this scene was bad because of the insufferably one-dimensional laid-on-thick Simple Honest Country Blokeness of the Lannister soldiers. Arya is obviously considering whether or not to kill them, do you think? But they are so Nice she reconsiders. 

The fact that she is still more than capable of affection, forming relationships, caring about people and so on, as also witnessed by that actor mother figure she befriended last season, indicates that despite ongoing trauma (actor murdered horribly in front of her, like all her friends) she is not the cold psycho she sometimes pretends she is. She is not Cersei (yet anyway). This is the point of this scene. Also to confirm that she is working through her list and Cersei is next. 

Scene 10: More redemption of traumatised killer characters! The Hound is riding with the Brotherhood Without Banners in a frozen bucolic twilight. What an adorable combo! Lines like “Why are you always in such a foul mood?” “Experience” and “There is no Divine Justice, you dumb cunt. If there was, you’d be dead” indicate that the BwB bring out the best in my bff @lasophus’ favourite character. They stop at the place where The Hound robbed those innocent country folk a few seasons back, as we were reminded of in the excitingly scored Previously sequence at the beginning. They have subsequently died of starvation-related causes as he and Arya predicted they would at the time. The Hound is now sorry and sees a vision in the flames of the Army of the Dead and buries the bodies of his victims and says some adorable words over them. The Hound’s redemption story is much more moving and interesting and spiritual than Jaime’s (a plotline I name “Choozy the Floozy” because of its Manichean orbit around his two love interests Evil Cersei and Good Brienne). But meanwhile the dramatic irony is killing us viewers at home! That poor little girl and her dad are going to rise as wights!! 

Scene 11: Sam fails to impress by finding out in the stolen restricted classified high-importance books that he was sent to the Citadel to read something that Stannis already told everyone but they ignored because he was too boring to listen to (what a merciful death that was at the hands of Can She Do No Wrong Brienne): Dragonstone needs to become an opencast Dragonglass mine asap. Which is a pity as Dragonstone is such an arresting work in the ‘dragon-brutalist’ style popular at the time of Aegon the Conquerer (which we will be admiring in the next scene but one). Sam fires off a raven to Jon which I hope will not be intercepted by some library rules-stickler maesters. 

Also it’s nice to see Gilly and Little Sam looking so well-dressed and -fed in this scene. Gilly, a sexual abuse survivor subaltern from a wintry hellhole with an evil father and who would otherwise have become an ice zombie by now, is far, far south, in a land where you can still get away with dressing lightly, inside a city which according to awoiaf “is surrounded by massive, thick, high stone walls.” Also their flat looks really nice.

Well done Gilly.

Scene 12: Jorah! Things have not gone well for you! Jorah is an obsessively lovelorn prisoner in a well-regulated, proto-humane leper colony. I guess actually that going to the seat of all worldly learning was a good move, but your terrible disease is going to need more than trolley gruel and a clean cell to be cured. Thankfully Our Sam is wearing gloves when Jorah does his unnecessarily dramatic Ghoul Grab. 

Scene 13: Our queen is coming home and everyone has put on eyeliner for the occasion! The general drift of the season’s wardrobe has been towards a kind of moody, shoulderpads-and-eyemakeup, subdued-charcoal-tones vibe. Everyone is looking great. Especially Cersei actually when she was receiving (at safe distance) Euron, and now Daenerys is looking wonderful too, with fine dragony detailing on her the tips of her shoulderpads. Actually Sansa had this look too, “Goth Military Queen” is clearly going to be massive this season. 

Daenerys has a moving moment with the Westerosi sand when she comes ashore. We have been waiting 6 seasons for this. Oh my god. 

I hope all the dragonglass mining won’t damage these amazing rock formations too much! 

This scene is mainly going to be recapped in screenshots.

A gorgeous example of Early Modern Dragon Brutalism.

Art throne

Fucking YES!

#agoiaf #game of thrones #game of thrones recap #dragonstone #s07e01 #recap #tvrecaps #gotrecap #teamros