#this is just speculation and not even legit speculation because I know nothing Jon Snow

[zadien]

Always - A Chenford 6x10 Spec Fic

The whole operation had gone to shit. 


From the shoot-out in the laundromat, to Tim’s desperate leap onto the fleeing vehicle, everything had gone to hell.

Using the last of his ammunition to blow out the rear window of the speeding truck had been a tactical decision that he was paying for as he found himself yanked into the truck, all but upside down, into the passenger seat. 

At least he’d managed to wrestle the man’s firearm from him, but now Tim found himself alone in the cab with an unknown suspect and no backup.

Managing to wriggle into a somewhat defensible position, he reached for his taser, weighing up the cost of tasing the guy versus how fast he could get control of the truck before it rammed into a civilian.

Sensing his intent, the driver yanked hard on the wheel, sending Tim careening backwards into the door, head slamming against the glass hard enough to see stars. He grunted and blinked against the pain that ricocheted through his skull. 

The pointed blade of a scalpel arced towards him and he jerked back, breath clogging in his lungs. 

Read the rest on AO3

[alinaastarkov]

Jonryas and Jonsas are one and the same. You both try to delude yourselves into your ship being Canon, even through the books are clearly going into the Jonerys route. Plus, shipping a brother with a sibling is so Gross. You are all sick in the head

(I know I’ve already used this gif but this was my legit reaction to reading this so)

Jonsas are pulling evidence out of their ass and using the show which doesn’t count, Jonryas have the quote “What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister?” We are not the same.

Now, hun, my three favourite characters in the series are Dany, Jon and Arya, and I have no problem with Jonerys or Jonerys shippers because, for the most part they’re harmless (except for you). I do not agree that they are going to fall in love, obviously. There’s only two books left, and Dany won’t arrive in Westeros for a while, so I don’t see how GRRM is going to fit this ‘epic romance’ in that time. I know there is foreshadowing that Jon and Dany will meet and both play significant roles in the War against the Others, but romance? No. They’ve never met, they’ve never spoken, they’ve never seen each other, they have no relationship beyond speculation and similar personalities. Meanwhile, Jon just DIED for Arya. Like, literally died. for. her. That’s some next level romantic shit, and GRRM has made it so painfully obvious how much they love each other I’m surprised this is still up for debate. He’s hitting us over the head with brick that has “JONRYA IS CANON” written on the side and people are still like “jOnRyA iS gRoSs GeOrGe WoUlD nEvEr!”

Are we really still talking about incest being gross? Really? In asoiaf? That ship sailed long ago. Bran’s second chapter in AGOT, to be precise. And if we’re sick in the head, what does that make you? Shipping an aunt and nephew?? Hun, look at yourself in the mirror before you criticise me, bitch.

I get along with a lot of jonerys shippers. I don’t mind it cause they understand the books well generally. But give me one piece of Jonerys evidence that specifically says Jon and Dany are/ are gonna fall in love. Go ahead.

Until, then enjoy all these quotes that loosely translate to “I’m right you’re wrong”:

Suddenly [Arya] looked like she was going to cry. “I wish you were coming with us.” “Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Who knows?” He was feeling better now. He was not going to let himself be sad.

The memory of her laughter warmed him on the long ride north.

He remembered the day he had left Winterfell, all the bittersweet farewells; Bran lying broken, Robb with snow in his hair, Arya raining kisses on him after he’d given her Needle.

Lord Eddard Stark sighed. “My nine-year-old daughter is being armed from my own forge, and I know nothing of it. […] How is it that you come to own a sword, Arya? Where did you get this?” Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon, not even to their father.

“Lumpyhead,” corrected Lommy. “He prob’ly stole it.” “I did not!” she shouted. Jon Snow had given her Needle. Maybe she had to let them call her Lumpyhead, but she wasn’t going to let them call Jon a thief.

Mikken’s mark was on the blade. It’s just a sword. If she needed a sword, there were a hundred under the temple. Needle was too small to be a proper sword, it was hardly more than a toy. She’d been a stupid little girl when Jon had it made for her. “It’s just a sword,” she said, aloud this time… …but it wasn’t. Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan’s stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow’s smile. He used to mess my hair and call me “little sister,” she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

“First lesson,” Jon said. “Stick them with the pointy end.” Arya gave him a whap on the arm with the flat of her blade. The blow stung, but Jon found himself grinning like an idiot. “I know which end to use,” Arya said.

All she could think of was the lesson Jon had given her. “Stick them with the pointy end,” she blurted out.

Everything Syrio Forel had ever taught her vanished in a heartbeat. In that instant of sudden terror, the only lesson Arya could remember was the one Jon Snow had given her, the very first.

In her hand, Needle seemed to whisper to her. Stick them with the pointy end, it said, and, don’t tell Sansa!

He’d had Mikken make a sword for Arya once, a bravo’s blade, made small to fit her hand. Needle. He wondered if she still had it. Stick them with the pointy end, he’d told her, but if she tried to stick the Bastard, it could mean her life.

Would she still have that little sword he’d had Mikken forge for her? Stick them with the pointy end, he’d told her.

[…] She yearned to see her mother again, and Robb and Bran and Rickon…but it was Jon Snow she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her “little sister.” She’d tell him, “I missed you,” and he’d say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything.

Maybe I should go to the Wall instead of Riverrun. Jon wouldn’t care who I killed or whether I brushed my hair…

Her home was gone, her parents dead, and all her brothers slain but Jon Snow on the Wall. That was where she had wanted to go. She told the captain as much, but even the iron coin did not sway him. Arya never seemed to find the places she set out to reach.

He missed his true brothers: […] Robb, his rival and best friend and constant companion. […] And Arya … he missed her even more than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn clothes, so fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had … yet she could always make Jon smile. He would give anything to be with her now, to muss up her hair once more and watch her make a face, to hear her finish a sentence with him.

[Jon] remembered suddenly how he used to muss Arya’s hair. His little stick of a sister. He wondered how she was faring. It made him a little sad to think that he might never muss her hair again. 

[…] “I know where we could go,” Arya said. She still had one brother left. Jon will want me, even if no one else does. He’ll call me “little sister” and muss my hair.

Arya missed Jon most of all. Just saying his name made her sad.

She wondered if [Jon] would still call her “little sister.” I’m not so little anymore. He’d have to call me something else.

[…] She missed Jon Snow the most of all her brothers.

Ygritte watched and said nothing. […] She looked plump as she crouched there, but most of that was layers of fur and wool and leather. Underneath all that she could be as skinny as Arya.

[Ygritte] reminded him a little of his sister Arya, though Arya was younger and probably skinnier. It was hard to tell how plump or thin Ygritte might be, with all the furs and skins she wore.

What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister?

“If you kill a man, and never mean t’, he’s just as dead,” Ygritte said stubbornly. Jon had never met anyone so stubborn except maybe for his little sister Arya.

“Roose Bolton summons all leal lords to Barrowton, to affirm their loyalty to the Iron Throne and celebrate his son’s wedding to…” His heart seemed to stop for a moment. No, that is not possible. She died in King’s Landing, with Father. 

His fingers closed around the parchment. Would that they could crush Ramsay Bolton’s throat as easily.

Jon Snow sank to one knee in the snow. Gods of my fathers, protect these men. And Arya too, my little sister, wherever she might be. I pray you, let Mance find her and bring her safe to me.

Bring her home, Mance. I saved your son from Melisandre, and now I am about to save four thousand of your free folk. You owe me this one little girl.

The girl smiled in a way that reminded Jon so much of his little sister that it almost broke his heart.

Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. The Night’s Watch takes no part. He closed his fist and opened it again. What you propose is nothing less than treason. […] You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell…I want my bride back…I want my bride back…I want my bride back…

Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold…

“If you kill a man, and never mean t’, he’s just as dead,” Ygritte said stubbornly. Jon had never met anyone so stubborn except maybe for his little sister Arya. Is she still my sister? he wondered. Was she ever?

“I have no sister.” The words were knives.

Jon had a certain grudging admiration for the late King-Beyond-the-Wall, but the man was an oathbreaker and a turncloak. He had even less trust in Melisandre. Yet somehow here he was, pinning his hopes on them. All to save my sister. But the men of the Night’s Watch have no sisters.

But they were all dead now, even Arya, everyone but her half-brother, Jon. Some nights she heard talk of him, in the taverns and brothels of the Ragman’s Harbor. The Black Bastard of the Wall, one man had called him. Even Jon would never know Blind Beth, I bet. That made her sad. (The Blind Girl, A Dance with Dragons)

It had been so long since he had last seen Arya. What would she look like now? Would he even know her?

“It wasn’t Longspear, then?” Jon was relieved. He liked Longspear, with his homely face and friendly ways. [Ygritte] punched him. “That’s vile. Would you bed your sister?” “Longspear’s not your brother.”

They are all convinced she is a princess. Val looked the part and rode as if she had been born on horseback. A warrior princess, he decided, not some willowy creature who sits up in a tower, brushing her hair and waiting for some knight to rescue her. 

He is a man of the Night’s Watch, she thought, as he sang about some stupid lady throwing herself off some stupid tower because her stupid prince was dead. The lady should go kill the ones who killed her prince.

And bitch that’s not even the half of it, honey

[fedonciadale]

Fuck Jon. I really think the fucker is in love with that dragon bitch. Bitch threatens my Sansa and he’s all like ok cool, she’ll make a good Queen, she’s not her father. Then the shit for brains proceeds to actually try and get Arya on his team, effectively trying to pit her against her own sister. Well Arya put him in his place, ain’t no one going to separate the she wolf pack. I’m ditching Jonsa, Jon doesn’t deserve her and officially shipping the Stark sisters!

Spoiler alert

I answer this together with two other asks, if you don’t mind.

- I am a Jonsa shipper, but jon nearly lost me here with his shittalking Sansa. How do I believe he’s in love with her if his first breath to A/rya is “Who tf does sansa think she is?” I still believe pol!jon because the romance scenes are still awkward and not romantic, but I just don’t know how to reconciles Jon’s shitty, bitchy little attitude to the smartest woman in westeros.   

- Jon is love with D. He blindly loyalty follows her even after Sam told him what she did, even after she actually almost threatened Sansa. I also noticed he was leaning towards her and away from Sansa in the meeting with the northern lords. They were leaning into each other. I find I can forgive him though, I just don’t want him for Sansa anymore.   

so, dear nonnies,

I’ve said it before and I say it again now. I won’t lose faith in our theories until all is said and done. For the moment, I fear that they are going to do a ‘Winterhell’ plot move and not prepare us for anything and then pull the rug. I do think it is significant that we do not see what Jon answered to Sansa’s question whether he bent the knee for the North or for love. But to have it come out of the blue, that would be bad writing. Sigh.

I mean I can sort of can understand Jon, if he wants to keep all his secrets, because he thinks it is too dangerous. He only looked happy, when he met Sam, Bran and Arya and the romance with Da€nerys is still off. Varys said over the marriage speculation that “Nothings lasts”. I mean this is a red flag. Also I think that Da€nerys instigating Jon to climb that dragon and giving no shit, that this is dangerous, taunting him to show himself to be brave in her presence, is a trope that does not well for Jon€rys: The woman taunts the man to do something dangerous for her, and shows, that she does not care for him, because she values him brave, doing everything for her etc. rather than just wanting him to stay alive. It is also a trope that is often used in love triangles to show who really cares for the guy.

Da€nerys was satisfied when the Winterfell populace was frightened of the dragons, he knows she is dangerous and maybe he tries to believe his own lies and makes it convincing so Sansa does not risk herself? He seems so focussed on the fight against the WW that he does not see that everything else like where does the food come from, is important as well. He looks like a desperate man to me. I wish, Lord Glover would have written, that he did not want his men near dragons...

I really, really miss clever BookJon though. If this is the real Jon Snow, I don’t know him. He seems to be even dumber than last season.

As for the Arya scene. I think he could not reconcile the woman he saw with the little girl and he tried to rebond with childhood memories, and Needle was that as well as Jon and Arya making fun of Sansa. I am so glad, that Arya gave him a peace of her mind. I wouldn’t say I “ship” the Stark sisters, but I want them to be a unit and I’m very glad it looks that way.

In addition, I must say, that I don’t even understand Jon complaining about Sansa. She held the North together for him and he makes fun of her? I mean Sansa’s question about the food was totally legit, and though I am sure many D fans think that Da€nerys’ answer “whatever they want” regarding the dragon’s food was “putting Sansa into her place”, it shows that she does not care enough. And we have discussed this before: Starving people die and dead people become wights. So this is important.

As for Sam: Sam and Jon both do not know yet that the Tarlys were burned, just that they were executed.

As for Jon leaning into Da€nerys, I did not see that. I still doubt he is in love, escpecially because they cut before he answered Sansa’s question, especially because D taunted him to risk his life, because Varys commented “nothing lasts”, because when they were alone it was here snapping her fingers “Warm your queen”, rather than him wanting to get close. So there is that.

Thanks for the ask!             

[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.