I'll valar YOUR morghulis
So I finally -- yes, finally -- got around to watching the third season of Game of Thrones! And I have some thoughts about it, so I thought I'd put them here! And if you like seeing a woman flail textually about something she only half-understands, well, you've come to the right place!
First off: I have not read a lick of the books, and while I'm mostly relaxed about getting spoiled, I'd appreciate it if those of you who know what's going to happen beyond this season refrain from doing so overmuch. But there are going to be spoilers for all three TV series here, so if you're spoiler-conscious, be warned.
However, there are a couple things where I'm left going 'I don't know what the fuck is going on with [x]', and if you do and would like to explain what's going on with [x] insofar as it has been covered by the show, please do!
A note on names: I watched the second season on files with hardcoded subtitles, so I know some people's names and how to spell them. But I don't know an equal number of names, and some names I know and I just don't care to get right.
- I managed to go into this season pretty unspoiled! I knew the following: Jamie would lose a hand; he and Brienne would spend a lot of time together, including some time spent with a bear; Sansa would get married (though I knew not to whom, I had seen her dress design); Anne Boleyn would flirt with Sansa; Dan would free a bunch of brown people from slavery; bitch, she might speak Valerian; and there would be something called the Red Wedding, where a bunch of people would die, and they would do it at a wedding, and the Rains of Castermere would play. All told, I think that was a fair level of spoileration -- which is to say, it didn't ruin anything that would've been more fun to find out myself.
- So about that Red Wedding. Yeah. I don't think you could've been even remotely connected to fandom and not heard, from the moment the third season was announced, that it would contain a thing called the Red Wedding. In that sense, I appreciate that the creators did a fakeout before with Sansa and Tyrion's wedding, and then had so many other wedding possibilities running around that I was, in fact, surprised when the band kicked up the relevant death song.
- I wish I were more sad that Mama Stark is dead, but she'd really gone off the deep crazy end lately. Also, she'd been hanging around with Rob, who's just as boring as dirt. While I am sad that they were brutally slaughtered, I don't think I'm going to miss their plotline.
- I honestly have no idea what Tiny Stark, Tinier Stark, Hodor, and Tonks are doing. They're going somewhere, though, that's for sure! And now Tiny Stark has a psychic boyfriend who has a butch sister! I have no idea who they are.
- I'm starting to worry that Ygritte did not kill Jon. That's sad. Shoot him again if necessary, honey. Keep shooting until you finish the job.
- What was Julius Caesar doing north of the wall?! Well, good for him.
- Arya and Sandor Clegane! Now that's a delightfully odd pair. Please note again: I cannot remember even a quarter of the characters' names, but I know Sandor Clegane's first and last. Why? I have no idea.
- I really want the Lady in Red and Stanley to be interesting, because I like religious fanatics, but ... they're just not. I have no idea what he's doing now, strategically speaking, beyond threatening the life of his bastard nephews and that knight his adorable daughter likes. (What's supposed to be the deal with her face, anyway?) Davos! ...Davos? Really? Like the place that hosts the World Economic Forum? Anyway, kinky sex magic is boring; staring into fires and saying things dramatically is boring; resurrection magic is slightly less boring, but only slightly.
- ...Wait, was the gay guy they were trying to hook Sansa up with ... Fred Baratheon's boyfriend? Same dude, right? Anne Boleyn's brother? And now he's set up to marry Mama Lannister? Yeah, I don't see that happening.
- Please note: I legitimately cannot remember Fred Baratheon's real name. He's the dead one, though. The more recently dead one. Who wasn't king. And had a boyfriend. That one. He'll always be Fred to me.
- As much as I adore Sansa -- fuck the haters, she is an object lesson in getting fucked over by patriarchy and having to pull yourself out of it by your teeth -- and as much as I think Sophie Turner kills it and brings its head home on a spike, I really think the creators did a bit of a disservice to the role with that casting choice. The younger she is, the more horrifying her situation is. Good on the show for having her remind Tyrion of her age, because I'd forgotten. Speaking of which: I hope the three of them -- Sansa, Tyrion, and the pretty lady -- become an unstoppable force. Threesomes? Anyone? Hell yeah.
- I have totally lost the plot of what Littlefinger's trying to do, but after turning over that smart girl to King Jeff, he can sink to the bottom of the ocean for all I care. I'm done giving a shit.
- I don't know how to spell Sexy Tyrell's first name, but that's okay, since she'll always been Anne Boleyn to me. I wish she weren't as doomed as she obviously is, but she's super-doomed. Her gran's great, though, and as we all know, grans live forever.
- Jamie and Brienne: I know, right?
However, I do have two big problems with this season, and here they are:
- Do we have to keep torturing Squidboy? I mean, do we have to? I only have the faintest idea of why he was being tortured, because the scenes were so gratuitous and gross that every time I got to one, I skipped ahead. I don't know what on earth was going on, and right now, I don't really want to. Simon from Misfits, you're a great actor, and I'm sorry your entire role was tormenting Lily Allen's little brother. That was so far beyond over-the-top I have no words for it. If I could have downloaded a 100% Squidboy-free version of the season, I would have. It was just disgusting. I hope the next season is all about Squidgirl's attempts to rescue him, because she's hella interesting.
- And Dan Eris, formerly of Dan Eris and Karl Drogo's Used Hondas, now a professional slave-freer. I don't want to revisit things that everyone else has (correctly) commented upon, but I do want to note that even if you could the story on its own, without real-word racial contexts, I think the second slave-freeing definitely didn't work. The first was actually kind of clever: work inside the system, gaming it in the way that only a person with stupidly huge amounts of money and power can, then let the professional lifelong soldiers decide they want to do their professional lifelong soldiering for you. Freeing the big ol' city, though, was a mess. The sexist mercenaries were just charicatures who might as well have been wearing t-shirts that said MY SEXISM MAKES ME A BAD GUY, and I could not see a single reason why a bunch of freed slaves would suddenly go all MOMMY~ to a random lady.
First off: I have not read a lick of the books, and while I'm mostly relaxed about getting spoiled, I'd appreciate it if those of you who know what's going to happen beyond this season refrain from doing so overmuch. But there are going to be spoilers for all three TV series here, so if you're spoiler-conscious, be warned.
However, there are a couple things where I'm left going 'I don't know what the fuck is going on with [x]', and if you do and would like to explain what's going on with [x] insofar as it has been covered by the show, please do!
A note on names: I watched the second season on files with hardcoded subtitles, so I know some people's names and how to spell them. But I don't know an equal number of names, and some names I know and I just don't care to get right.
- I managed to go into this season pretty unspoiled! I knew the following: Jamie would lose a hand; he and Brienne would spend a lot of time together, including some time spent with a bear; Sansa would get married (though I knew not to whom, I had seen her dress design); Anne Boleyn would flirt with Sansa; Dan would free a bunch of brown people from slavery; bitch, she might speak Valerian; and there would be something called the Red Wedding, where a bunch of people would die, and they would do it at a wedding, and the Rains of Castermere would play. All told, I think that was a fair level of spoileration -- which is to say, it didn't ruin anything that would've been more fun to find out myself.
- So about that Red Wedding. Yeah. I don't think you could've been even remotely connected to fandom and not heard, from the moment the third season was announced, that it would contain a thing called the Red Wedding. In that sense, I appreciate that the creators did a fakeout before with Sansa and Tyrion's wedding, and then had so many other wedding possibilities running around that I was, in fact, surprised when the band kicked up the relevant death song.
- I wish I were more sad that Mama Stark is dead, but she'd really gone off the deep crazy end lately. Also, she'd been hanging around with Rob, who's just as boring as dirt. While I am sad that they were brutally slaughtered, I don't think I'm going to miss their plotline.
- I honestly have no idea what Tiny Stark, Tinier Stark, Hodor, and Tonks are doing. They're going somewhere, though, that's for sure! And now Tiny Stark has a psychic boyfriend who has a butch sister! I have no idea who they are.
- I'm starting to worry that Ygritte did not kill Jon. That's sad. Shoot him again if necessary, honey. Keep shooting until you finish the job.
- What was Julius Caesar doing north of the wall?! Well, good for him.
- Arya and Sandor Clegane! Now that's a delightfully odd pair. Please note again: I cannot remember even a quarter of the characters' names, but I know Sandor Clegane's first and last. Why? I have no idea.
- I really want the Lady in Red and Stanley to be interesting, because I like religious fanatics, but ... they're just not. I have no idea what he's doing now, strategically speaking, beyond threatening the life of his bastard nephews and that knight his adorable daughter likes. (What's supposed to be the deal with her face, anyway?) Davos! ...Davos? Really? Like the place that hosts the World Economic Forum? Anyway, kinky sex magic is boring; staring into fires and saying things dramatically is boring; resurrection magic is slightly less boring, but only slightly.
- ...Wait, was the gay guy they were trying to hook Sansa up with ... Fred Baratheon's boyfriend? Same dude, right? Anne Boleyn's brother? And now he's set up to marry Mama Lannister? Yeah, I don't see that happening.
- Please note: I legitimately cannot remember Fred Baratheon's real name. He's the dead one, though. The more recently dead one. Who wasn't king. And had a boyfriend. That one. He'll always be Fred to me.
- As much as I adore Sansa -- fuck the haters, she is an object lesson in getting fucked over by patriarchy and having to pull yourself out of it by your teeth -- and as much as I think Sophie Turner kills it and brings its head home on a spike, I really think the creators did a bit of a disservice to the role with that casting choice. The younger she is, the more horrifying her situation is. Good on the show for having her remind Tyrion of her age, because I'd forgotten. Speaking of which: I hope the three of them -- Sansa, Tyrion, and the pretty lady -- become an unstoppable force. Threesomes? Anyone? Hell yeah.
- I have totally lost the plot of what Littlefinger's trying to do, but after turning over that smart girl to King Jeff, he can sink to the bottom of the ocean for all I care. I'm done giving a shit.
- I don't know how to spell Sexy Tyrell's first name, but that's okay, since she'll always been Anne Boleyn to me. I wish she weren't as doomed as she obviously is, but she's super-doomed. Her gran's great, though, and as we all know, grans live forever.
- Jamie and Brienne: I know, right?
However, I do have two big problems with this season, and here they are:
- Do we have to keep torturing Squidboy? I mean, do we have to? I only have the faintest idea of why he was being tortured, because the scenes were so gratuitous and gross that every time I got to one, I skipped ahead. I don't know what on earth was going on, and right now, I don't really want to. Simon from Misfits, you're a great actor, and I'm sorry your entire role was tormenting Lily Allen's little brother. That was so far beyond over-the-top I have no words for it. If I could have downloaded a 100% Squidboy-free version of the season, I would have. It was just disgusting. I hope the next season is all about Squidgirl's attempts to rescue him, because she's hella interesting.
- And Dan Eris, formerly of Dan Eris and Karl Drogo's Used Hondas, now a professional slave-freer. I don't want to revisit things that everyone else has (correctly) commented upon, but I do want to note that even if you could the story on its own, without real-word racial contexts, I think the second slave-freeing definitely didn't work. The first was actually kind of clever: work inside the system, gaming it in the way that only a person with stupidly huge amounts of money and power can, then let the professional lifelong soldiers decide they want to do their professional lifelong soldiering for you. Freeing the big ol' city, though, was a mess. The sexist mercenaries were just charicatures who might as well have been wearing t-shirts that said MY SEXISM MAKES ME A BAD GUY, and I could not see a single reason why a bunch of freed slaves would suddenly go all MOMMY~ to a random lady.