#a well executed plan of exposing the lannisters and it could work

[horizon-verizon]

When Rhaenyra discovered that Tyland Lannister had divided the royal treasury and sent most of it beyond her reach, Rhaenyra subjected him to incredibly brutal interrogation to get him to reveal where it was, including gouging out his eyes and gelding him. She planned to have 16 years-old Addam Velaryon tortured on the mere suspicion of disloyalty, only stopped by Corlys warning him in time for him to get away. I agree that GRRM make it clear that she was the rightful heir, but he also make it clear that Rhaenyra was just as horrible and tyrannical as Aegon II. None of them deserved the Iron Throne.

I wrote about this HERE and HERE.

*EDITED POST* (3/27/24)

I think that "none of them deserved the Iron Throne" in a fandom that already tries to blame the entire Dance on her runs the risk of discouraging people from assessing Rhaenyra's background and the material for her motivations for violence (as one would do with a perosn they see as even close to "human" or acting as an ordinary perosn could), thus it only encourages making Rhaenyra's actions "nonsensical" and "unjustifed" and "barbaric". '

ALSO, doesn't Aegon decide to execute dozens and dozens of people, including Sylvenna Sand, Essie, and those who followed the Shepherd?! People he definitely didn't need to kill?! Double standard much?

A)

Coming from what I say below, by the time Rhaenyra goes to KL, her decision to be more ruthless also comes from the death of her oldest son, Jace, and before this, she already lost her second Luke to Aemond's machismo rage. When she lost Luke, she broke down and as the quote about her reaction to losing Jace shows, it appears she was determined to destroy any persons who helped the greens usurp her. The usurpation led to the conflicts that would cause her kids' deaths.

I think it makes sense for Rhaenyra to look at Tyland (a green and the one who rationalized his betrayal of her in the green council) as her enemy. He was a person who at least enabled the greens to properly usurp her in the green council and didn't seem to have much compunction or difficulty doing it...and he is the one who is still helping the greens by removing the royal treasury from Rhaenyra's grasp. Before Rhaenyra imprisoned & tortured him, he had already done this one critical thing. It wasn't all that practical...but to write it completely off as unforgiveable stupid is unfair.

Remember that it is this one thing that really disables Rhaenyra from establishing her rule efficiently and more peacefully. She needed to fix this issue AND she obviously sought some sort of revenge through him. Especially during a time when an invading green army could enter KL at any time to oust her, creating a very fearful environment for her as well as the ordinary inhabitants.

Imagine what it would have been like, for a second--anyone who is reading this--from either perspective:

your antagonistic step-parent has insulted/worked against you since you was 10 or so ("who protects her from Cole", years of trying to expose her and her sons, etc). AND you have experienced unsubtle and subtle harassment from a person you can't just kick out because they are your father's wife and technically outrank you for the latter half of your childhood

same step-parent taught their children/your siblings to dismiss you and your son's enough for years until they formed their own "rivalry" and your siblings do not respect your children/their nieces or nephews bc they feel they are inherently superior -> one cold-bloodedly kills one of your kids (and he did do so purposefully, fuck HotD and it's "logic" of making everything an accident and not the poor greens' fault).

*Rhaenyra didn't do anything to these people to merit the harm they did to her, which preceded any harm she did to them or those who followed them and helped them to power.

You have been usurped, you lost a child (this part would hit harder if you actually wanted and loved your kids) one through a miscarriage, another murder, and one in battle

your father's death was kept from you until the very last minute;

you arrived at the place where you must figure out how to keep your hard-won position from enemies still outside the gates that could come at any second

you probably have the need to "prove" your kids' deaths "meant" something

These are Rhaenyra's likeliest pressures. The deal with Tyland is that Rhaenyra saw him as a green against her (and can we blame her?) as well her wanting to to get things under control as soon as possible. I don't condone the suspicions of the bastards, especially Nettles, but you make it seem like Rhaenyra was unique in her cruelty while simultaneously claiming none deserved the throne, flattening the story to "no one is 'better' than the other, so no one deserves it".

I wouldn't say that Rhaenyra was altruistic or compassionate to everyone around her, or that in general altruism or thinking of others as a part of her own family was in her character. Rather she has a similar level of regard for others as people imagine is common amongst humans: not wanting to directly cause damage to those she doesn't know until perceived harm is done, or until she feels forced to. Again, otherwise more concerned with her immediate life and self-interested than not. But still, with who Tyland is, what he did to help the greens displace & usurp her and then lead to her sons' deaths, her need to establish order as soon as possible and how all of these things happening all at once or in quick succession creating a heavy psychological burden on a person...it's not hard to see how a lot of people, maybe you, anon, would do similar things.

Then there is the KL commonborn's need to survive not only from attacks but to make a living (traders, merchants, barkeepers) when the influx of travelers from anywhere suddenly stops. Suddenly there is a lot more thievery. Then there will also be lots of people going crazy from the stress, which would cause more murders, rapings, etc. This would explain how executions also rose and Rhaneyra decided "might as well make money off of this" and charged people for coming to see the rising number of executions. There is also not much time going to be paid towards these executions as much as, once again, defending oneself from enemies and the grief of losing kids.

The reason why we should or do admire people who manage to make good or even passably logical decisions during moments like these is because they managed in the first place. Which makes them special. Yeah we need leaders who can try and do the most they can to perform their duties, but to expect them to be 100% or even 80% without help is...ludicrous. They are still very human.

B)

Vaemond's death, while brutal was arguably deserved & necessary bc:

he thought it smart to protest her offering Luke as Corlys' heir by stating he was a bastard right in front of her after Viserys had already stated and declared that anyone who called his grandkids bastards would have their tongues ripped out/corporal punishment (almost like Brandon Stark with Rhaegar, but at least Brandon's action isn't trying/allowing the murder of innocents)

called Rhaenyra a traitor to the crown, endangering her and her kids' lives so he could benefit from maybe becoming the next lord of Driftmark, something he doesn't actually need

nor what the actual lord (Corlys) wanted. If Vaemond so wanted the seat, he could have gone to Colrys a long time before, but he didn't bc he knew Corlys would shut that down.

Remember that in his society, the lord/head of house declares the next heir/leader of house. If one argues that this feudal hierarchical system is inherently unjust and acknowledges that Vaemond is trying to get others killed purely to benefit from being a man, chasing power that could be granted under other circumstances, then one should not argue that Vaemond is acting morally when he calls Rhaenyra's kids bastards. There is also nothing moral about using a person's bastardry and patriarchal mores of female chastity to claim that you deserve to rule. (The point of the Dance.)

C)

Again, By the time she and Daemon took KL, she's made the decision to be more ruthless ("The Red Dragon and the Gold"):

Aegon the Elder, on the other hand, had no reason to take the throne or watch his bastard kids fight in pits or rape a 11-year-old and several other servants and maids (you think he stopped at "fondling", dream on) and Alicent, while she was trying for power for herself and in a different story would be more commendable for doing so by taking advantage of her position as the would-be heir's mother, she also did much of her amoral actions without provocation. What did she do to Rhaenyra before any of Rhaenyra's kids are born? I already told you. And again, if she hadn't turned her sons against Rhaenyra, Aemond would not have done as he did regarding Vhagar and then got it in his head to kill Lucerys to prove a point of strength.

I'm not sure what you expected from Rhaenyra that wouldn't likely be a lot of people's own reactions, or what one would expect from most people after their kids have been killed. You'd have to be privileged enough to not expect others to harangue or assault you purely out of hate or ambition.

Also, meanwhile, Alicent is out here thinking she's in the moral right to dismiss the deaths of Jace and Luke as "bastard blood shed in war" and saying the deaths of her son(s), the legitimate ones, are worth more than Rhaenyra's based on legitimacy. The social stigma of those born out of wedlock informing the worthiness of lives. It's actually pretty amazing she didn't have Alicent imprisoned in a cell deep within the Keep way down below in the deepest of cells that no one ever comes out of for that alone.

What made Rhaenyra tyrannical by the end was that from an early time in her life, she was treated as undeserving due to her femaleness and then she had to keep her belief in herself extant in the face of that and then from the war she grew paranoid from several betrayals. Whether she is a "good" person or not is not really my issue, my issue is that she wasn't allowed autonomy or power that she didn't claim for herself. That she was regarded and treated as "bad" or inferior by those around her before she ever really got to develop into something else. Before she had to self-determine. when when she did self determine, yeah, she'd not gonna be Daenerys-good, but grow as a woman within a feudal structure, which is not always going to be exactly "moral" but can try to claim power. Esp when it's denied to her based on gender but she's been declared as an heir for about 2 decades. So yeah, she's "just like everyone else" class wise, but her gender and how she defies the desired compulsion of her gender to not press for rule is what we are here for to witness and ponder over when we also witness the patriarchal violent response to such.

That comes with the development of the need to protect such powers, which got worse after her son deaths and the multiple pressures of a city during a war, these things which a ruler didn't usually have to face right when they begin to rule all at once.

So no, Rhaenyra wasn't always tyrannical or evil. There was progression based on others' attacks and Viserys never gave her some sort of training in politics that Jaehaerys probably gave Aemon and Baelon and Aegon I gave Aenys. Of course, Rhaenyra had the opportunity to learn on her own, but

A) She already did on Dragonstone and again the situation in King's Landing is very unlike the typical ascendant's situation upon their first days of rule: an ongoing war, riots incited by a hiding green and a crazy man from the Citadel most likely, some councilmen unjustifiably blaming you for their wife's death, etc. The pressure would have been intense and the need to pull everything right together seemed to have outrun her mental capacity...again sons' deaths (also Rhaenys, I don't think she was distant with Rhaenys, who also loved her sons and the daughters of Laena Rhaenyra raised).

B) To think that some education from her father/ruler and confidence in her wouldn't have helped her to get her bearings is pretty myopic.

[adecila]

Oh i want one fic, "one", were ned says yes to cersei and becomes joffrey hand and cerseis lover 😭

Oooh this would make for a fun AU. Unfortunately saying yes to Cersei would be a bit ooc, but a good author with the right set up could make it work 😏

So petitioning the capable nedsei writers for this one 🥺🥺🥺

[takerfoxx]

When trying to write a big balloon of good feelings with the EXPRESS INTENTION of bursting it... how big is too big before it's just cruel?

A very good question, and it comes down to purpose, execution, and follow-through.

Now, given my history and reputation, those sorts of situations are something of my forte, and I’ve had a lot of experience and trial and error to work things out, so here’s how you get maximum impact out of your dark, cruel plot-twists.

First, ask yourself why are you doing this? Is it purely for shock value, or does it serve some greater purpose for the plot and characters? If it’s the second, then go ahead and skip to the next section. If it’s the first, then go ahead and put that idea back in the oven because it’s totally not ready yet.

Look, as a writer, I get the appeal of shock value. Shock value got Imperfect Metamorphosis on the map. Shock value is in my blood. But if all you have is that shock and nothing else, then it’s shock value for shock value’s sake, which is just shallow and useless. You want to shock and disturb, yes, but you also want your audience to keep going to find out what happens next! Dangle that emotional catharsis in front of them! Give them some measure of hope that this is leading somewhere satisfying! Even stories like Chinatown and The Mist, which ended with the protagonists losing in horrible ways despite all their efforts, still felt like they were saying something bigger about the human existence and didn’t feel like they were cheating the audience.

For example: Marisa’s death in IM. I’ll freely admit, the idea first occurred to me and became part of the plan for the shock value, a way to throw down the gauntlet and show that no one is safe. But since the idea came to me early in IM’s run, I had literal years to refine the idea, build towards it, and map out how the fallout would go down, so that by the time it came around, it had turned into an essential part of the plot, from which the rest of the story would lead.

See, here’s the thing you need to understand about dark plot twists: they follow the same rule as edgy humor that breaks societal taboo. And that is this: the twist is not the payoff; the twist is the set-up. Think of the difference of between a rookie “comedian” who thinks that saying shocking things that you’re not supposed to say constitutes as “funny” and those who are offended just don’t have a sense of humor, and a genuine master like George Carlin, who used edge subject matter and taboo breaking not as the punchline, but as the set-up to the bigger joke and thus earn the big laughs when he managed to land the punchline and say something bigger about the topic at hand. It’s a wire act without a net, something that is spectacular if you can pull it off and lead to something greater, but will end in disaster if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Now, let’s move onto the next part: execution. Here you have to be careful, because while it’s perfectly acceptable (and in fact encouraged) to break the rules and conventions of the story’s genre, you still have to ensure that it’s keeping with your story’s internal consistency and rules, and that it makes sense! You want such-and-such a character to betray their friends and turn bad guy? Okay, but it has to make sense and be consistent with their backstory and motivations. You want to pull the rug out from under the heroes and ruin everything they had been working toward? Okay, but it has to be consistent with the rules that you had set up.

I’ll give you a few examples. Now, Game of Thrones might be in the doghouse due the dumpsterfire of a final season, but there was a time when it was upheld as the gold standard of dark plot twists, with the two big examples being Ned Stark’s execution and the Red Wedding. The reason why those moments were so shocking and effective wasn’t because they came out of nowhere, but because they broke the conventional rules of storytelling. OF COURSE the main character would survive! They even gave him an out by having him sentence to the Wall where his bastard son was, where they would no doubt reunite and plan their next steps! Ned’s the hero, after all! Except no, this isn’t that kind of story, Joffrey is still a sociopathic narcissist, doing what sociopathic narcissists do.

And the Red Wedding? OF COURSE it would work! Walder Frey had accepted the compromise, and we’ve put a lot of time and investment in Rob and Cate and their retainers. Rob was practically the new main character, and the driving force against the Lannisters. What was more, he was winning, and he was going to keep winning, even with his one or two slip-ups...except no, he wasn’t, because he had been warned about Walder Frey’s easily bruised ego, he had broken his word, so there was going to be consequences when the Frey’s cut a deal with the Lannisters, so welcome to Medieval-style skullduggery!

Hell, you can have some real fun with this too! And if I may toot my own horn, let’s look at the most recent dark twist from IM: the return of the Shadow Youkai.

Now, I know what my reputation is, and what people expect from me. As such, I can use those expectations to play a sort of follow-the-cup game with the plot. Everyone knew that the Shadow Youkai wasn’t gone for good; the epilogue of Fires of the Sun pretty much showed that. But no one knew when she’d be back, and that let’s me play with expectations a bit.

So I put together a big beach trip, where Rin takes all of her friends, new and old, out into public. And since this is Rin’s story, everyone expects it to go wrong. She expects it to go wrong. Because things always go wrong for Rin!

Sure enough, here comes Hong Meiling and Koakuma, two people with reasons to ruin Rin’s life! Surely they’ll catch and bust her! In fact, it turns out that Koakuma is Elis’s cousin, so surely that would mean she would...except no, they have a short chat, Koakuma doesn’t expose them, and they all go their separate ways. Nothing happens.

Oh shit, here comes Reimu! Not only does she know Rin, she also knows everyone in Team Nineball, and has fought most of the other girls as well! This isn’t good, how will Rin wriggle out of this (no pun intended)...except she doesn’t need to. Reimu and Rin’s various friends walk right past each other over and over without noticing, she chitchats with Hong Meiling and Koakuma for a bit, and then she’s called away to the next chapter’s plot. Rin never even so much as realizes that Reimu was there. Nothing happens.

But wait! Flandre is still a problem, and Seija’s still loose out there! And there she is, taking advantage of Rin’s absence to trigger Flandre’s madness! Surely THIS is the big disaster that’ll...except no, Kogasa quickly gets Seija to piss off and Wriggle coaxes Flandre back to sleep. Nothing happens.

Wait, the beach party was...a success? Nothing bad happened? Everyone had fun and made friends like they were supposed to? And it ends with Rin actually saving a stranger’s life and getting praised for it? Which story was I reading again?

Oh hey, there’s Minoriko, someone who hasn’t been seen a long time, and she says that Hina successfully devoured the Shadow Youkai’s essence, so there’s nothing to worry about. Well, that’s a relief! Strange though that a little curse goddess could handle something of the Shadow Youkai’s caliber, seeing how Sariel already mentioned how unsafe it is to use anything other than the original sword to do so, and how Rhapsody of Subconscious Desire already established that the Shadow Youkai is capable of taking over a secondary host, provided that she had access to their subconscious, and-

Click.

Boom.

So if you’re going to do it, make sure you set up believable reasons why it would happen in advance, even if the audience doesn’t notice them at first. Otherwise, you get Vince Russo’s booking of late-90′s WCW, where everyone was switching allegiances on a dime left and right just for the sake of having a SHOCKING SWERVE! Remember: it’s a highwire act without a net. Know what you’re doing.

Also, for the love of God, if you’re going to have a bad guy do a really bad, shocking thing in one part of the story but later join the good guys later on, don’t just sweep said bad thing under the rug. If Cain the Bloodspiller butchers little Timmy in book one but becomes Cammy the Bloodsaver in book five, then don’t let little Timmy be forgotten. Make sure that there’s still consequences.

And finally, the follow-through. Justify this shocking twist. Have it mean something. Take your time to explore the consequences. Show how it affects the characters. Dig deep into their psyches and make it feel real. The reason people STILL talk about Aeris’s death in Final Fantasy 7 is that the gameplay itself was designed to make you feel her loss, both from the viewpoint of the characters and you, the player.

One of my favorite dark twists is Mami’s death in PMMM, because it follows all of these conditions and does so spectacularly. It sets up how dangerous fighting witches is and explains that someone could really die while doing it, while tricking us into not expecting that to happen by already showing us how Mami kicks ass and establishing her as a main character with a promise to form a lasting bond with Madoka right before pulling the trigger. And afterward, it takes the time to really dig into the consequences of her death, from Madoka’s depression to Sayaka’s increased recklessness to being the catalyst that brought Kyoko into the story in the first place. Everything that happens after does so as a result of that moment.

So yeah, by all means, do that shocking thing, but make sure you put in the work to both earn and justify it.

[wendynerdwrites]

"[W]ho is more stupid then Sansa Stark? I read book...one and only cruel in here is Sansa who lied, traitor, and defeat her whole family.”

Find it funny that the same people who go on about how stupid and awful Sansa was for going to Cersei about Ned planning to leave King’s Landing and thus “destroying her family” (because apparently this one mistake was the only mistake ever made by the Starks and is what caused everything bad that ever happened to them. This apparently caused Robb to jilt the Freys, Edmure to drop the ball at Stone Mill, Theon to sack Winterfell, freed Jaime Lannister,  made Ned tell Cersei he knew about her children, killed Ned’s guards, killed Jon Arryn, convinced Joffrey to execute Ned instead of sending him to the Wall, made Balon Greyjoy decide to go to war, pushed Bran out the tower window, “destroyed the Stark armies”, killed all those Starks that are still alive... )

Are the same who never bring up that Daenerys took a woman whose home and people were destroyed by her husband, who was gangraped by her husband’s men, and thought “Yes, I must insist that she give my husband first aid.” Who needed the fact of “Your Khal and his men raped me a dozen times and killed everyone and everything I ever loved. NO SHIT I POISONED HIM AND CURSED YOU” SPELLED OUT FOR HER AFTER THE FACT. A decision which totally DOES NOT defy all logical sense, despite Daenerys having FAR more information available to her than Sansa ever had. A decision that TOTALLY DOES NOT involve her actively ignoring the atrocities surrounding her done IN HER NAME and getting her husband and child killed as a result. Nope, nothing stupid, self-destructive, or insensitive about THAT.

Are the same people who never bring up that Jon, without ANY EXPLANATION OF MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES OR PROPER CONSULTATION announced to his brothers that he was abandoning a mission Beyond the Wall and break his vows and expected them to follow him. EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW that tons of his brothers already considered him a traitor, a wildling-lover, and a political opportunist.

Who don’t bring up that Robb’s entire strategy towards taking down the Lannisters involved keeping them boxed in so Tywin couldn’t ride for King’s Landing and required Edmure to STAY IN POSITION and not, say, RUN OFF TO COUNTER AN ATTACK ELSEWHERE. Yet NEVER EVEN BOTHERED TELLING EDMURE THAT so he didn’t accidentally let Tywin through by running off to the Mill to protect some people in the Riverlands which is kind of LITERALLY HIS JOB. Or bring up that Robb was told repeatedly NOT to let Theon go to Pyke and did it anyways. Decisions that directly resulted in A) Tywin making it to Blackwater and securing the Tyrell alliance, leaving the Northern armies adrift in the Westerlands with NO RECOURSE and NO STRATEGY LEFT and b) Winterfell being sacked and Bran and Rickon being driven from their homes.

Who don’t bring up that Doran Martell decided to gaslight and evade his daughter for fucking DECADES, secretly plotting to marry her to a Targaryen Prince (because marrying a Targaryen WORKS OUT SO WELL FOR MARTELL WOMEN) without even telling her and instead pretended to consider marrying her off to WALDER FREY and was shocked, SHOCKED! When Arianne ended up deciding she was fucking DONE and plotting something that ended with Myrcella Lannister being maimed and his entire con with the Lannisters nearly being exposed, thus endangering his entire family. AGAIN. And SOMEHOW STILL THINKS PLAYING POLITICAL GRAB-ASS WITH PSEUDO-TARGARYENS IS A GOOD IDEA.

Who don’t bring up how Ned Stark decided that KEEPING HIS DAUGHTERS IN A CITY CONTROLLED BY THE LANNISTERS AFTER CERSEI ORDERED JAIME AND SANDOR TO HUNT DOWN ARYA, letting them wander the city and castle grounds without proper guards or supervision, and leaving Sansa, WHO HE BETROTHED TO A KID HE KNOWS TO BE A MONSTER AND STILL DOESN’T BOTHER EVEN SPEAKING WITH HER ABOUT in the care of a woman who passes out drunk at public events and literally NO ONE ELSE was a thing. But that wasn’t stupid or negligent or ultimately destructive to his family AT ALL!

Who don’t bring up that Tyrion enacted a plan at Blackwater that involved basically burning down a third of the city and didn’t bother putting any contingencies in place to protect the citizens who lived in said third of the city, then was baffled when people hated him and didn’t talk about how great he was for Blackwater. RIGHT TYRION, THE ONLY REASON THE NOW-HOMELESS BEGGAR WOMAN HATES YOU IS BECAUSE YOU’RE A DWARF. THAT IS LITERALLY THE ONLY REASON WHATSOEVER (an yes, I know it’s A reason. I know prejudice exists and Tyrion’s constantly dealing with that, but writing it off as the only reason would be like me saying that the reason I ever get criticized is because I’m a woman/Jewish.). 

Or how Tywin, upon being presented with the PERFECT OPPORTUNITY to destroy the Starks’ political clout by merely pressing his suit against Catelyn Stark’s illegal abduction of Tyrion, CHOSE TO UNLEASH THE MOUNTAIN ON THE RIVERLANDS, MAKING HIM LIABLE FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE REALM. A supposed political mastermind, with all information available to him, with GRANDCHILDREN POISED TO INHERIT THE IRON THRONE, with extensive experience in intrigue and law, had the perfect opportunity to sue THE FUCK out of the Starks and completely disenfranchise them politically on COMPLETELY LEGAL GROUNDS at the cost of no more than a ride to King’s Landing and some parchment and ink, instead chose to commit war crimes that accomplished nothing except to a) make everyone in Westeros ready to skewer the Lannisters b) give Ned Stark the perfect opportunity to haul his ass up on charges of mass murder and treason and c) Draw attention to your family’s more illicit actions on a national scale.  Or how he disinherited both of his sons and chose to antagonize the son who has proven disturbingly competent to the point of patricide. Or how he wanted his son to endanger the “Key to the North’s” health, reproductive and otherwise by raping/impregnating her at thirteen, thus nearly guaranteeing that their Winterfell meal ticket (and any child she would almost certainly prematurely deliver) would go up in smoke immediately with the deaths of their Stark prizes instead of say, WAITING A COUPLE YEARS WHICH EVEN THE MAESTERS OF THE CITADEL INSIST MUST HAPPEN IN ORDER TO PROCURE VIABLE HEIRS. WHICH WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SANSA MARRIAGE IN THE FIRST PLACE. TYWIN IS A POLITICAL GENIUS WHO TOTALLY BOLSTERED HIS FAMILY!

Or how Littlefinger has literally delivered Robert Arryn RIGHT into the hands of his political rivals without any army or viable property of his own, and in fact ALSO leaves his other major prize (Sansa) alone with the very rivals he himself admits are pretty savvy, for long stretches. Not at all stupid.

And of course, none of the decisions mentioned here might be why the Starks got so thoroughly fucked in the ear. No, it was STUPID, EVIL, ELEVEN YEAR OLD SANSA’S ONE MISTAKE IN GIVING CERSEI INFO WHICH SHE PROBABLY WOULD HAVE GOTTEN FROM HER SPIES FIVE MINUTES LATER THAT IS WHAT “DESTROYED THE STARKS” (Even though five out of the eight of them are still around, barring Benjen’s ambiguous mortal state) and that was it. That’s what caused it all. Because that decision is literally what caused everything bad that happened to the Starks before and after she actually did the thing. Nobody else made any stupid, self-destructive, devastating errors of judgment that contributed to anything bad to themselves and/or House Stark. She’s the only one who made a mistake and it is THE DECIDING MISTAKE THAT WAS BOTH SIMULTANEOUSLY STUPID BUT SOMEHOW ALSO DELIBERATELY CRUEL AND TREASONOUS TO HER FAMILY AND CAUSED ALL OF THEIR PROBLEMS. That she made chiefly because SHE IS TOTALLY THE BIGGEST IDIOT YOU GUYS, in contrast to characters who made destructive choices despite having far more information, means, and experience to make better choices but didn’t. Because it’s an eleven-year-old, gaslighted, traumatized child who is most accountable for everything, ever. Everyone else’s decisions were somehow smarter and more honorable because... They knew better? Or, at the very least, had every possible means to know better and blatantly ignored basic logic? And that makes them smarter than the stupid eleven year old? 

Tywin Lannister: political mastermind.... who turned a golden political opportunity into a treason charge and mortal danger. 

Ned Stark: Too honorable and good... Who left his daughters unsupervised, uninformed, and unguarded in a dangerous court/city run by the very people who he a) is investigating for murder and treason and b) ALREADY TRIED TO HUNT DOWN AND MAIM ONE OF KIDS and c) (as he discovers about halfway through) ATTEMPTED TO MURDER AND SUCCEEDED IN CRIPPLING ANOTHER OF HIS KIDS. 

Daenerys Targaryen: Awesome badass liberator... who saw a woman whose life was destroyed and met mid-gangrape by her husband’s people and thought, “This woman should totally be trusted to put poultices on my husband’s wound. After all, I did stop those guys after the thirteenth rape. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?!”

Jon Snow: Perfect, brave, hero classic... Who practically shunned the company of his brothers once he took command, KNEW that many of them already thought he deserved an execution, and decided to announce his blatantly oath-breaking new mission without any sort of preamble or explanation.

Robb Stark: Tactical Genius and hero.... Doesn’t bother communicating his strategy to his own commanders.

Tyrion Lannister: SUPER GENIUS WONDERFUL HUMAN! ... Who can’t understand that people whose houses he burned down might have some valid complaints.

WHO IS MORE STUPID THAN SANSA STARK SHE DEFEAT HER WHOLE FAMILY.

“Otto West: Apes don't read philosophy.

Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement.”

--- A Fish Called Wanda, 1988, directors Charlie Chrichton and John Cleese

[yennefers-geralt]

Unraveling the Littlefinger Take Down Plot

As I hoped, it was revealed that Bran, Arya, and Sansa were plotting against Littlefinger the whole time and the fighting between the girls was an act. The story doesn’t make sense in general since the second Bran looked into LF’s past and then told his sisters about it, the great hall scene from 7x07 could have immediately played out in 7x04, which would have allowed the Starklings time to have more interesting stories that made sense and helped further develop their characters. But... alas.

Anyway, this how I make sense of the LF Plot:

The Purpose

Petyr Baelish has been manipulating all of the players in this game since before the show even started. What’s more, he has gotten away with it without anyone suspecting him. They’re all too focused on fighting each other to look his way with anything but condescension or casual contempt. 

So instead of outing him this way in 7x04, the Starklings decided to trick him into believing that he was still at the top of his manipulation game and they were just a few more pieces for him to move around. Then at the last minute, they slammed the trap shut on him. This was about showing him that he isn’t a master manipulator before executing him.

The Planning

During their scenes in 7x04 when Baelish was trying his “I loved your mom” seduction routine with Bran, we saw that Bran looked into Littlefinger’s past with the whole, “Chaos is a ladder” quote. He probably did a whole rundown on him beyond just that one scene since by the time we get to Bran’s reunion with Arya in the godswood, he is completely unconcerned about Baelish’s intentions when Sansa warns him (bc in the end they won’t matter) and hands Arya the weapon she will execute Baelish with. 

After Bran gives Arya the dagger, the godswood part of the scene abruptly ends. I speculate that after the cut, they would have discussed everything Bran saw Littlefinger do to their family and the realm. Together, the three of them decided to take him down, but Sansa and Arya plan to get a little extra payback instead of simply executing him. Taking Littlefinger’s life isn’t nearly as terrible for him as playing him for a fool is. It’s similar to how Arya got Raff to repeat what Lommy said to him for his murder. So they want him to feel that, as usual, he has the upper hand only to reveal at the last minute that nope, he was just played by a band of teenagers.

The Act

So while Bran spies on the bigger threat -- the army of the dead -- Sansa and Arya spend the rest of 7x04 as well as 7x05 and 7x06 getting Littlefinger to believe that his manipulation of them is working. 

I say it starts in 7x04 because of Sansa’s response to the sparring match between Arya and Brienne. For starters, we don’t have an onscreen reason why Arya doesn’t still distrust Brienne. I’m not saying they should be enemies, but Brienne still wields what they think is a Lannister sword gifted to her by Jaime Lannister, their enemy. The friendly way Arya approached her without any lingering suspicions felt odd. A throw away line like, “I heard how you saved my sister” would’ve helped. Without it, I can only assume that her sparring match was planned by the Starks so that they could set up the appearance of a rift between the girls. That’s the only explanation I can see for why Sansa responded or “responded” the way she did. There was no reason for Sansa to be angry about the A/B sparring match, yet afterward she stomped away “angry”. This was meant to give Littlefinger an opening for trying to turn the girls against each other. 

The rest only makes some kind of sense because of Brienne’s concern in 7x06 about leaving Sansa alone with Littlefinger. She’s worried about how many of the people of Winterfell he may have turned to his side during his time there. Bran, Arya, and Sansa probably know that LF has his spies among their staff and are using them as an audience for their fighting in 7x05 and 7x06. Those spies must have had access to secret passages near the girls’ rooms to allow them to listen in, which would explain why the girls put on those acts in the bedrooms with the door shut. A secret passage would also explain how Arya mysteriously apparated into her bedroom in 7x06.

This explains why:

Arya was making those OOC and over the top demands about killing people for not being loyal to Jon. Her criteria for adding people to her list is not so flimsy as that. 

she threatened her sister with violence. She has never expressed wanting to kill Sansa in any canon. Even if Sansa hadn’t been putting on an act when she diminished Arya’s trauma to make her own more significant and told her she should be on her knees before her (which D&D probably took from Sansa’s dialogue in AGOT), that still wouldn’t have provoked Arya into genuinely threatening to kill her since that type of language is something she’s used to hearing from her sister before they parted.

she kept herself in plain view while “spying” on Littlefinger. She knows better than to stand there openly so he can see her watching him. The only explanation is that she wanted him to see her and that she was banking on him underestimating her since she’s just a teen and couldn’t possibly have much experience in espionage. 

she didn’t see that she was being manipulated despite being taught to tell truth from lies and being a very intuitive person.

Bran was absent for their part of the plot. Both sisters have good relationships with him and would have confided in him if they were having serious issues like this. He would also have stepped in to protect them if they were genuinely being pit against each other.

How the Story Should Have Been Handled

In a perfect adaptation, no part of the story would have taken place at all since it was pointless and a waste of valuable screentime. I simply can’t get past D&D taking two of the five most important characters, Bran and Arya, and wasting them on this, especially so late in the game. Bran could have been helping Arya develop her skinchanging skills. Arya could have helped in the combat training since the training that’s common in Westeros wouldn’t necessarily work for every body type, so her water dancing skills would have been a good alternative. And Bran could have been assuming leadership of the North and delving into the past with epic flashbacks that could deepen the story and prepare everyone for the coming fight.

That said, if this story had to play out, then the only way it works is:

if Littlefinger had spies around Winterfell. We could argue that the woman he paid in 7x05 is a spy, but that should have been made more obvious during his “trial”

if it had been revealed that there are passages in the walls of Winterfell that allow LF’s spies to do their work, which would explain fights Arya and Sansa staged that were behind closed doors. Or...

if the fights should have only been staged in public 

if the manipulation of Littlefinger led to him being exposed. By that I don’t mean Bran saying, “I have visions and know you’re guilty.” I mean that the elaborate act could have unintentionally made him put his guard down and helped the Starklings gain physical evidence against him or make him slip up in some way. Then there would have been a purpose to the act other than just screwing with him for a few episodes before slitting his throat.

As it stands, I have to do a lot of assuming and headcanoning to make this sloppy bathroom break story work. It would have been better if it had never happened.

[lesmotsincompris]

Thoughts on Game of Thrones S07E07

It’s over. It doesn’t mean we won’t hear about the show anymore, as mainstream media tends to make a huge noise over every little rumour for the upcoming season, but at least we now have some distance between ourselves and a new episode of GoT. Let’s enjoy it.

I’ve heard that the critics are back to praising the show, which surprises me but also doesn’t. On the surprised side, I’ll give that this was better than S07E06, but it was still far from a good episode overall. On the unsurprised (but disappointed nevertheless) side, people praising GoT despite all the inconsistent characterizations, plot contrivances, awful dialogue, and shoddy worldbuilding isn’t exactly new. If this season was the breaking point for only a handful of people, I’m already happy.

We had an extra long episode and I have no idea why. There was a lot of stalling, especially in the King’s Landing subplot. It’s amazing how D&D can put useless crap on screen and actually relevant events and character development offscreen. Priorities.

I’ll probably post a season review at some point, but for Sunday’s episode here’s what I have:

King’s Landing

I’m gonna be honest: I watched this episode yesterday and I barely remember most of the dialogue now. This isn’t a very good effect for one of the most relevant gatherings in your entire series, but that’s hardly the first time one of the show-exclusive “big moments” didn’t work for me.

Part of the reason for that is the conga line of contrivances that led to this meeting. The removal of Aegon’s storyline from the books left Daenerys and Cersei to fight each other, with the septsplosion last season and the show-only Lannister poverty making the odds even worse for Cersei. To give the Lannisters a chance, D&D had #TeamDany coming up with stupid plan after stupid plan. Even so, they still have two dragons and the bigger army, while Cersei’s Golden Company is a Narrow Sea away; they could have ended the war in this episode if they wanted to. Why didn’t they try this instead of a truce?

You can argue this would weaken their forces against the army of dead, except: a) Dany accepted the idea of a truce even before she was fully convinced of said army’s existence; b) they should know better than to trust Cersei Lannister. Despite Cersei’s inconsistent characterization (Lena Headey is a goddess doing wonders with that character), I think we can all agree that nobody expected her to suddenly work for the good guys. The characters don’t know Cersei had her own pet zombie, but we do (and apparently everybody around her, since she keeps calling him Ser Gregor?) so the presence of the wight is hardly a game changer.

Other than that, there was a lot of walking and stalling and characters restating the same things they said before. Not very exciting. Though I legit enjoyed Qyburn’s necromancer bonner when he saw the wight.

But see, here’s a problem: we got more emphasis on secondary characters like Qyburn, Bronn, or the Hound than more important characters like Daenerys or Brienne. The Hound in particular got a lot of screen time this season and there was some heavy CleganeBowl foreshadowing, because of course D&D would do CleganeBowl. That’s why I keep calling the character “Hound” and not “Sandor”. What’s even character development. Or themes.

Brienne of Tarth said “fuck loyalty”. What’s next, Sansa Stark murdering a man out of revenge and smirking at the sound of his screams? Oh wait... 

What is Euron still doing in the story? There was a lot of teasing that he would be worse than Ramsay, but for the moment we got nothing. He’s Littlefinger 2.0: a shadow of his book self, damned because the showrunners don’t know what to do with him and can only think of stupid subplots to keep him around for some mysterious reason.

Cersei and Tyrion meeting is another evidence of how talented Headey and Dinklage are, yet the scene accomplished very little in terms of storytelling and characterization. The show barely explored the emotional consequences of Tywin’s murder for Tyrion, nearly dropping this entirely after season five, so it’s hard to feel it when he claims to hate himself for it. Shae got it even worse and her murder was forgotten altogether, something that I should have seen coming back in season four when they Greedo-ed her death scene.

It’s hard to believe Cersei would pass a chance of killing Tyrion, even without the valonqar prophecy. Why did they do this? It makes Cersei even more inconsistent (they’re certainly not gonna redeem her character or anything) and makes Tyrion’s plot armor even more obvious. This was the show that seven seasons ago would have responded Tyrion’s “give him the order” with “Ser Gregor, kill him”, followed by Tyrion dead. Ned and Robb Stark did not die for this.

Speaking of Ned, I can’t stand those references to R+L=J (A?). Seriously, guys, this isn’t clever, especially not in a show with so many dick jokes. We got it the first ten times.

Jon is an essentially good character in the books, but the show is trying to make him a saint. A dumb saint, of course, because again being honorable and honest is framed as stupidity and cleverness is something evil. Just a reminder: Ned Stark lied too. In fact, one of his biggest lies became this show’s hero, but I don’t expect D&D to notice that.

I still don’t know wtf they want with the Cersei pregnancy subplot. Cersei and Jaime seemed to have broken up for good, but we thought that before and we were wrong. Particularly when Cersei became the personification of Jaime’s worst nightmares, performing the act that he broke his vows to prevent. But hey, nothing stands in the way of true love, right?

Speaking of true love, the show romance of Jon and Daenerys is finally a worse love story than Twilight.

Things I legit enjoyed: the snow falling in King’s Landing. A bit sudden, but still a beautiful sequence.

Dragonstone

Everything about Theon was infuriating.

First we had more fellating of Jon, with both him and Theon stating their characters and motivations. This is lazy writing, pure and simple. If the audience isn’t already aware of Theon’s identity conflict, D&D have done a poor job as writers and this scene won’t fix it.

Here’s another thing: as much as I love the Starks, Theon doesn’t owe them anything. He wasn’t a bastard or a ward, he was a hostage. He was taken to Winterfell specifically so Ned could kill him in retaliation in case Balon did anything stupid (something he was likely to do because Balon).

Plus we already had Theon realizing the Starks were his true family back in season… three? Four? This shouldn’t come as a huge revelation, and least of all from Jon. What’s the emotional significance of Theon and Jon’s relationship in the show? This moment, if we needed it, should have happened with Sansa or Bran, two Stark kids he had an actual on screen relationship with.

Worse, how does Theon claims his place among the Ironborn? With toxic masculinity! The fight scene was overly long, entirely unnecessary, and terribly offensive. I missed the whole kick-in-the-crotch thing and I’m glad I did because I might have thrown something at my TV. D&D have a repulsive track record in dealing with trauma and PTSD, and Theon’s in particular, but this was a whole new level. Mutilation and torture aren’t funny and shouldn’t be used as a joke. I can’t believe I have to actually say this!

Ugh, fuck this show.

Winterfell

I have to confess actually I enjoyed the Winterfell scenes, despite everything that led to them.

Again the show is damned by the poor foundation they establish for their big moments. Yes, watching Littlefinger exposed by Sansa is almost wish fulfillment, but there’s no reason this shouldn’t have happened earlier this season other than the writers really, really wanting to save it for the last episode. In order to achieve that, they came with the stupidest subplot of the entire series, putting Sansa and Arya against each other for reasons you can find only in the most insane and misogynistic posts on Reddit.

There’s no way to take this back. We have no indication that Arya and Sansa were pretending to fight this whole time and a few clues that they weren’t, so in the end Arya still threatened to rip her sister’s face off. This is disturbing and I refuse to ignore it. Yes, having the two sisters finally bonding is nice for a change, but nothing will give me back the brain cells that I lost watching the Winterfell plot this season.

Again women bond over murder, but at least this time they did it better: a public trial, with all of Littlefinger’s crimes listed, a clean execution, and no smirks of empowerment.

There are also minor nitpicks, such as Bran’s visions now counting as evidence, the fact that nobody had any reaction to Littlefinger’s crimes or execution, Sansa calling herself stupid, or the old “one Stark sister couldn’t have survived what the other did” debate. Get out of fuckin’ westeros.org forums, D&D!

Everybody misses Ned, but not Catelyn. Or Robb. Or Raccoon.

On a boat/Dornish lush forest

Boatsex did not live up to its hype. This was supposed to be the culmination of Jon and Daenerys’ feelings for each other, and… well, now that I phrase it this way, it was: it was just as bland and forced as all of their interactions this season. I thought I would remember Team America’s sex scene and I wasn’t disappointed with myself.

The editing was kinda weird too, jumping straight to some auntie fucking, with a seemingly jealous Tyrion lurking and a Robot-Bran voice over completing the creepiness. Okay.

So. The R+L=J revelation. There’s so much wrong with this scene I would need a whole essay tearing it apart. In fact, I may actually write one later this week. That’s how angry I am. A little preview, then.

We often speculate what show events will be or won’t be in the books in some form. Stannis burning Shireen or “hold the door” are likely to happen, though under very different circumstances. R+L=J is one of such events, and we know this revelation will happen in the books too. Among all fan theories, this is the strongest, considered canon by most readers.

It won’t happen in the books like this. There’s a lot about this scene that directly contradicts canon, both book and show. Maybe D&D don’t realize this because they’re hacks, but that hardly makes things better. This isn’t the first deliberate change to the source material, of course, but it’s one of the easiest to avoid and one with terrible implications.

First things first: Robert’s Rebellion didn’t just happen because Rhaegar abducted Lyanna, it happened because Aerys murdered Rickard and Brandon Stark when they demanded answers on this abduction, and then requested Ned and Robert’s heads. In doing so Aerys gave the middle finger to the entire feudal contract in the worst possible way, so he had to be removed. That Lyanna and Rhaegar loved each other doesn’t change this in the slightest. The Rebellion was still entirely justified.

So. Love. Maybe Rhaegar and Lyanna loved each other, but how long did it last? The murder of Rickard and Brandon Stark is show canon too. At some point Rhaegar learned about this, because the fight at the Trident happened. You know, Ragger was such a great guy that he decided the best course of action was to leave a pregnant Lyanna isolated in a tower and go fight defending his mad father. All of that is also show canon, by the way.

At what point did Lyanna learned that her father-in-law murdered her father and brother? Was she in a baby-making mood after that? If she never learned, it’s also bad because Rhaegar knew, and then we have rape by omission. If she did learn, at some point she became a prisoner in a tower.

Even if somehow there’s an explanation for all this that makes Rhaegar come out as a good guy, there’s still the fact that he was a 20-something, married and with two children, and the fuckin’ crown prince. There’s a huge power imbalance in their relationship, so in the best case scenario we have a dubious consent.

All that is to say: don’t romanticize Rhaegar and Lyanna. Don’t romanticize because Rhaegar was a douchebag and even if Lyanna was on board in the beginning, at some point she deeply regretted this.

Not happy with that, the show was also extra cruel with Elia Martell. It’s almost ironic, given that show-favorite Oberyn Martell gave his life so that the suffering of his sister Elia was acknowledged. D&D didn’t learn their lesson.

Before Rhaegar ran away with Lyanna, he and Elia had two children, one of them a boy named Aegon. This was also established in the show, including Aegon’s name. Aegon was the heir to the crown, but dissolving the marriage between Rhaegar and Elia means disinheriting him and his sister, thus removing House Martell from the succession line. Quite shitty, huh? It doesn’t even make sense politically, since Rhaegar would lose the only major house supporting him. I can’t see what he would gain with that, we have no indication he hated Elia and his kids that much, and Targ polygamy was a thing the show could totally have used if they really wanted Jon as a legit child. Oh no, but he must be a child of monogamous true love.

Worse, he must bear Aegon’s name. Why would Rhaegar have two children named Aegon? That’s just plain stupid. I can’t help but think they wanted this so Jon could bear Aegon the Conqueror’s name, a name fit of a true hero. Not honorable nice foster father Jon Arryn, no. That’s not heroic enough.

When I watch a bad show, I like to play a game: what’s the worse thing they may want with a scene?

With this one I got: they want to romanticize rape, erase a woman of color and her children, and turn Jon into the most cliche fantasy hero possible, precisely the type of character ASOIAF goes out of its way to criticize. But as much as this last part infuriates me, the first two are still more offensive, and frankly dangerous.

Fuck you, D&D. Fuck you with a Valyrian sword. I’m done with tolerating your unfortunate implications.

There’s something rotten in fantasy if we still cheer this kind of narrative.

Oh yeah, and the Wall fell. It was pretty. All very predictable too. The only thing surprising me in this show is how gross it can be to give us the most white-centered, male-centered cliche fantasy story possible. Maybe it is all about cocks in the end.

[cometsweepandleonidsfly]

“There is nothing more powerful in the world than a good story.”

These are the words of Tyrion Lannister toward the end of Game of Thrones’ series finale. Meaning that they are the words of showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Meaning that the pair’s 80-minute send-off to Westeros on Sunday night was not just an accidental explosion of indulgent self-defensiveness, but a conscious and true effort in expounding its own genius to an audience that has every right to now feel corrupted and betrayed.

For (most) of its previous seven seasons, Game of Thrones was a creation that appealed equally to the head and the gut. Its blend of ultra-detailed mythology, emotionally complex characters, classic themes, expensive set-pieces, frequent nudity, and buckets of gore swirled together to create the smart person’s trash, and the trashy person’s jewel. In 1996, novelist George R.R. Martin created a fantasy for those who supposedly hate fantasy, but in 2011, Benioff, Weiss and whoever cuts those massive cheques at HBO turned that creation into an uber-fantasy. Here was something so overwhelmingly compelling in its material and slick in its execution(s) that the announcement of its end has forced the culture to question whether or not culture itself will ever be so easily united under one single act of creativity.

And then GoT’s eighth season unfurled, and the first word I could ever muster every Sunday night was: ugh. As in, ugh, how did Benioff and Weiss (and, we can only assume, Martin) find and then magnify every flaw in what has otherwise been a fantastic production? As in, ugh, how are we to accept that characters who we knew to be layered suddenly turn into parodies of themselves?? As in, ugh, how did HBO hear Benioff and Weiss’s plan for the final stretch and not decide, hmm, maybe you guys need a half-dozen more episodes to actually accomplish that without it seeming stupidly rushed??? As in, ugh, can no one on GoT figure out how to properly light a damn battle scene????

At least Benioff and Weiss seem all-too-aware that these questions might be asked as audiences were exposed to this last stretch. After all, “The Iron Throne,” the sixth and final episode of the series’ eighth and final season, is consumed with responding to any and all of the potential criticisms of the material that came before it, especially last week’s horrendous “The Bells.”And their answer, by the way? Well, it is just as Tyrion puts it above: We’re great storytellers, so shut up.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let’s start with talking about what went right in “The Iron Throne.” First, there was that fairly cool, if obvious, shot of Dany walking in front of Drogon’s wings. Then there was the interesting decision to abandon any score for the episode’s first 10 minutes, to underline the hollowed-out nothingness that has become King’s Landing. And then … okay, that’s all I’ve got, because right now, all I can think about was everything that went wrong. This might take a while.

Or not, because if Benioff and Weiss decided to abandon so much of their own thought and consideration into this season’s narrative, character, themes and aesthetics, then why should I devote any of my own to their supremely thin effort at defending their own creative powers in this, their final (and, as they would surely say, finest) hour? So, here’s more of a rapid-fire rant of all the many things that sank GoT’s finale:

Dany swaps her wardrobe for something Sith-esque, because if you’re going to have a beloved character suddenly turn into a genocidal monster, it’s best to have her start wearing black immediately.

Drogon must really hate chairs. Oh, and Tyrion really loves rearranging chairs. This episode was very obsessed with chairs. (Wait: Does Drogon think the chair killed his mother? Or is he just heavily into obvious metaphors? Maybe this is something that will be clarified in the inevitable GoT spinoff, Warg This Way with Bran the Broken.)

Bran? Really, Bran?? I’ll come back to this in a moment.

It’s wonderful how the various lords and ladies of Westeros can seemingly teleport into King’s Landing at the drop of a hat to decide the fate of their kingdom. Also wonderful is the chin-scratching/Googling that everyone must have been doing during this scene to remember who Tobias Menzies used to play on this show (answer: Edmure Tully).

“Bran the Broken”? Okay, really, I’ll come back to this again.

How much of Benioff and Weiss’s script was just "Character X walks away portentously”?

I wish we could all pull a Brienne and go into the history books to write a better ending.

When Samwell hands Tyrion a copy of A Song of Ice and Fire, I swear we were all one Sigur Rós cover of All Along the Watchtower away from GoTpulling a Battlestar Galactica. (If that sentence makes no sense, I’m sorry. And if it does: I’m even more sorry.)

I just know that there is a half-decent Donald Trump joke to be made about Jon’s fate at the Wall, but there is no way I’m going to attempt such a thing at this late hour.

It was nice that Jon got to see his direwolf Ghost again, and I’m all for any Tormund appearance, but are we to believe that the man was brought back from the dead by the Lord of Light … just to kill a woman he himself helped put in power? That is not just me quibbling with the “logic” of magic, either. It is a simple question of the strength of Benioff and Weiss’s (and, again, Martin’s) narrative foresight.

Okay, back to the Bran thing: Tyrion essentially puts GoT’s favourite creepy weirdo on the throne because “he has the best story.” It is a pretty good story, no doubt. But has no one on this show been paying attention to Arya’s arc? You know, the one in which she started off as a little kid who watched her father die and ended up becoming a face-changing assassin who defeats the greatest evil in this world’s history? Bran can fly, but Arya can slay.

I guess we’re never going to know why the Night King was so obsessed with arranging his victims’ corpses in that circular pattern, hmm? Okay, no problem! I was just wondering if that was a deliberate storytelling decision or another one of those “it-simply-looked-cool” ideas.

I could go on, but it’s late and you likely have 17 other GoT-related tabs open on your browsers (because not only does “The Iron Throne” mark the end of HBO’s cash cow, it spells the end of such guaranteed traffic drivers as this very review; publishers around the world are drowning their sorrows in Dornish wine this very moment). And besides, what more could be said of an episode that name-checks its own storytelling brilliance? Well, perhaps on this note Tyrion puts it best again – and, again, highlights in bright yellow the smarmy satisfaction that has characterized so much of Benioff and Weiss’s work this season: “It’s a good compromise,” the once-and-future hand of the Seven Kingdoms says, “if no one is happy.”

Fair enough, my friend. Fair enough.