#i tried throughout s7 to just have fun with whatever nonsense happened but it’s been so long i’m tired of pretending this is good

[danishsweetheartmp3]

i’m seeing a lot of posts from mostly white people who identify with mailin in some way justifying this season by saying that it’ll be useful to the general audience (young white girls) which is just getting so exhausting like…i’m glad you guys are getting something out of the season but truly, can people of colour not have one thing??? there were 5 (five!!!) non-white characters in the cast who could’ve been contenders for main but apparently white people can’t empathise with us, so instead we have to suffer through 8 more weeks of mailin’s performative activism shenanigans

[nyangibun]

GoT S07E06 Thoughts

So I don’t know if this is late or early considering technically the episode doesn’t air till Sunday, but whatever, here we go: 

There was only one awesome thing about this episode, which was anything to do with the Night King and the Wight Dragon. Everything else was a complete departure from all we’ve come to learn about these characters, but that aside, let me try to understand it as best as I can.

We start the episode on Jon and the rest of the A Team trudging along and making fun of Gendry. I actually really liked all these scenes because the male bonding was done well, the dialogue was funny and the chemistry between these characters was believable. I mean I didn’t know I needed a Tormund x Sandor best friendship till that episode, especially when they begin talking about Brienne. Mr Tormund “I want to make babies with her” Giantsbane. It was brilliant, needless to say. 

What’s not so brilliant but a great moment of foreshadowing was Tormund’s conversation with Jon. He essentially tells Jon that although Mance Rayder was a great man, his pride got a lot of people killed, echoing Jon’s own words to the man: 

“"Isn't their survival more important than your pride?”

And of course Dani’s words to Jon in the Cave of Invisible Chemistry. 

The problem I have with this is that it comes from Tormund, a wildling man whose pride is as much as a defining factor as his ginger beard. But whatever, I see what they’re trying to do here. They’re trying to justify what happens later because if Tormund can understand the dire need for Dani’s help over his own pride then Jon should too, and he does, of course, as we later find out. 

Here’s the thing though. I am still firmly of the camp that it’s all a ruse, and this is the moment Jon realises he might have to bend to Dani’s will for her alliance. He doesn’t want to and he knows fully well that the Northern houses will not accept her as their queen in any capacity, but all he cares about is his people’s survival through the Long Night. He’s willing to lose his kingdom for their safety. And this thought becomes even more concrete in Jon’s mind the moment Dani arrives to save his dumb ass with her three dragons. The look of awe on his face as those dragons rain hellfire on the wights is indicative of this because up until that point, he’s had a very abstract understanding of what these dragons are capable of and how they can help him. Seeing it in person, seeing them turn a hopeless situation into a victory, Jon fully understands now that the only way to survive is for Dani to fight with them with her dragons. 

It’s the only way this exchange makes any sense: 

“How about my queen?”

“How about those who swore their allegiance to you”

“They’ll come to see you for what you are”

“I hope I deserve it”

“You do”

Now I’ve bolded that line because this is very foreboding. Although I believe Jon is playing Dani, I don’t believe he fully grasps who she is yet for himself. I think he truly does believe she has a ‘good heart’ to an extent, but going by what we’ve seen in the past five episodes, he is also extremely wary of her. He’s seen her temper tantrums, her questioning of Tyrion (her second biggest fanboy)’s loyalty over his family and how quickly she can go from Coolheaded Ruler to Firebreathing Tyrant. He might not know the extent, but he’s been warned plenty of times not to trust a Targaryen and to be much smarter than Robb and Ned. So although she says she’ll fight with him, he’s reaffirming his loyalty to her. He doesn’t need to do it, but he needs her to fully trust that his allegiance is to her, that he’s as taken by her as she’s obviously by him, because Jon is putting his pride and honour away in order to be a little more ruthless, a little more manipulative. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s used a woman’s attraction to him as a means to get what he wants. Yes, he did fall in love with Ygritte, but you can’t say that a lot of his devotion to her, in the beginning, was done so to prove that he’s just as much a part of the wildlings as anyone else. 

For Jon to bend the knee to Dani because he actually believes in her good heart or because he ‘loves her’ would be a complete character assassination when he turned his back on his first love for the Night’s Watch. Duty, honour and loyalty are huge pillars of Jon’s personality. He’s put aside his honour to bend the knee to Dani, but I refuse to believe he would truly put aside his duty and loyalty to the North for ‘love’, especially when he knows that no Northern house will understand why he did it. 

There is also a moment when Dani leaves the room that he looks up to the ceiling and sighs wearily. That’s not the sigh of a man because he was nearly killed. That’s the sigh of a man who knows the repercussions of what he just did but having no alternative than to do it, because like I said, there’s absolutely no way the North is going to accept what their king just did. His position is already so precarious. They didn’t agree with him going south and for him to not only do that but bend the knee as well? Without consultation with the Northern houses which they will consider a slight in and of itself? Well, Jon basically just lost himself his kingdom when it comes to light what he did. And this ties in nicely with Sansa’s S7 arc, which has basically been a montage of all the ways Sansa is a fit and just queen in comparison to our other two queens, who are so hell-bent on defeating each other, one burnt a bunch of food reserves and the other one is... well, Cersei. 

Of course I believe Jon knows all of this. He knows he’s going to lose the North because of his actions, but Dani doesn’t, so it’s essentially an empty offer. And he knows he can do this because he has Sansa at home and he’s always had unwavering faith in her ability to rule. Jon is the Odysseus to her Penelope, and the trials and tribulations they’re both going through right now respectively only continue to highlight that for me. 

Jon will be seduced by a Calypso and Sansa will have to outsmart her suitor. 

And speaking of Sansa, let’s bring it back to Winterfell because that’s the other major plot point we need to talk about.

Arya and Sansa need to be locked in a room together to talk their shit out because this is getting ridiculous. Arya threatening Sansa’s life, blaming her for Ned’s death, essentially dismissing the trauma and abuse that Sansa had to endure for years because Arya can’t empathise with her own sister is the most uncharacteristic bullshit I’ve ever seen. The Arya we’re seeing right now is acting more like the waif than the Arya we know, and as someone who has loved and adored Arya for years, I’m justifiably angry about this. 

Now there are two reasons why Arya is acting like this. One, D&D is making Arya the mouthpiece for all the Sansa haters that have been spouting their crap for years, blaming Sansa for every discrepancy while celebrating the same nonsense in other characters, only to have Arya (thus the haters) be proven wrong when it comes to light that Sansa is loyal to Jon and the North. If this is the case, I can understand what they’re trying to do, but at the expense of a beloved character? By pitting two sisters against each other? Just goes to show how little D&D actually understand about women and writing real female friendships. I mean they had Jon and Gendry basically declare themselves best friends in a manner of seconds but two women who have suffered unimaginable horrors and have been desperate to be home and safe with their family, aren’t allowed to care about each other. Bullshit. 

The other reason is that Arya and Sansa are both playing Littlefinger, fully aware of what he’s trying to do. I want to believe this because it would explain why Sansa seeks Littlefinger out in the first place to talk to him as if she would willingly go to him for advice. After everything that’s happened, after knowing what she does about him and saying all those things about not trusting the man, her going to him for advice seems highly suspicious. Sansa is not that stupid. It would also explain why Arya would threaten to kill Sansa yet hand her the dagger right after.  

It would also explain why Sansa sent Brienne away to King’s Landing when Cersei invites her. Of course, there was no way Sansa would go anyways, but the coldness as she orders Brienne to go right after Littlefinger tells her that Brienne would do anything to uphold her oath to protect the Stark sisters, even from each other. And considering Brienne swore a separate oath to Sansa specifically (not Arya), this suggests that if Arya were to try something, Brienne would be duty-bound to protect Sansa from harm. If Sansa and Arya were planning something, they wouldn’t be able to risk having Brienne interrupt. Either that or Sansa would rather die than let anything happen to her sister in spite of what Arya’s been like. I don’t believe Sansa would try to hurt Arya herself. It’s not who she is. 

Now moving back to Dani, I found two very interesting things about her this episode. The first was her conversation with Tyrion. Aside from the extremely contrived high school musical type dialogue where Tyrion assures Dani that Jon is in love with her because he’s been staring at her longingly (which I have to say is where!!! I haven’t seen that at all), he also criticises her for burning both Randyll and Dickon. I find it extremely telling that any time he tries to put the blame of anything on her, she gets angry, deflects, accuses him, questions his loyalty and basically absolve herself of all crime. 

“When have I lost my temper?”

“Burning the Tarly’s”

“That was not impulsive. That was necessary”

That wasn’t necessary. The burning wasn’t necessary. It was a cruel and sadistic punishment, which has been shown as such all throughout the show. Does anyone remember Jon putting out Mance when he’s burning in the pyre for this very reason? And burning both Randyll and Dickon was unnecessary. Only one of them had to die in order for Dani to make her point across, but she chose to kill both because Dickon dared to defy her. Not to mention her ‘burn or die’ wasn’t necessary if she wants to be a just ruler, which she clearly doesn’t anymore.

Again, Dani is showing her true colours more and more here. I mean do you know of anyone else who constantly insists they’re the rightful ruler and loathes being criticised? Oh yeah, Joffrey. And wasn’t he a peach? 

Then you have Tyrion and Dani’s conversation about her succession in the case she dies. Not only does this foreshadow her death, which I believe is inevitable at this point, but it highlights just how short-term her thinking is. All Dani has ever cared about was sitting on the Iron Throne, not the actual ruling, because if she did, she would realise that everything she wants to do would be meaningless if there isn’t an heir to pass the legacy onto. Dani even gets angry at Tyrion for his ‘long-term thinking’ but what kind of ruler doesn’t look to the future when they make their decisions? A really poor kind. Like I’ve said, Dani is a conqueror and that’s it. 

The second thing I found interesting was when she looked at Jon’s body as they peeled back his clothes and saw his wounds, confirming that he was literally not metaphorically stabbed in the heart. I said in my last review that Dani is in love with the idea of Jon rather than Jon himself. The awe in her eyes when she sees that confirms it to me. She sees Jon as her equal, as a mirror image of who she is, aka the prophesised hero, beloved by his people just like her. That’s what she finds most attractive about him. She is essentially Narcissus fallen in love with her own reflection. The kicker though is that Jon is as far from Dani as can be. He is her polar opposite as a ruler. And when it all comes to light that he’s a Targaryen, she’ll feel threatened and TargBowl will commence. 

Stray thoughts: 

- We’re going to have a Braime reunion and I’ve never felt so blessed!! It’s been 5000 years and I’m ready for Jaime to realise he’s in love with Brienne. Make it happen, D&D. 

- Where is the Hound going? 

- Where the fuck is Bran? 

- Are we ever going to see Ghost? 

- WIGHT DRAGON!!!!!!!