#thelearningcat got

[thelearningcat]

Lyanna Mormont standing next to Sansa with a hand of the Queen badge would have made the ending 100x better. (Okay maybe not that exactly but something with a similar thought...)

I love Sansa's ending dont get me wrong. It makes coherent sense. However.

There's always a however with this season, isn't there?

However, we never get real evidence that the North would accept her as queen. Certainly, once Jon leaves, they show her support and that they've got her back, but... queen? Idk. We got a lot of old men who seemed pretty willing to disregard her in the past.

But if they didn't kill off all our female ladies of the north in the long night?

If they made a point in the last couple episodes to show Sansa interacting with lords and ladies from the north that we know and care about?

The last scene could have been even more powerful as we saw lords and ladies we recognized as part of the crowd, or acting as advisor to our badass queen. Especially the women in the crowd would have made for a stronger image.

While I was pretty satisfied with Lyanna's death... I also feel like we really missed out on the companionship and interaction between little Lyanna, who in many ways is a mix between Arya and Sansa- willing to fight and awesome at being a lady and leading, and Sansa.

Sansa could be a real tutor to Lyanna, and Lyanna could act as a friend and ally. Sansa deserves a friend who can hold her own and is not so far off from her equal.

Sansa deserved to not be solitary in her final scenes, surrounded by men. She deserved scenes building up friendships and relationships with the north in ways that were tangible, and for that final scene showing that she had the love and respect of the north, instead of what is almost meaningless chants from a crowd who has shouted the same for two others in recent past.

[thelearningcat]

I've loved Sansa's dress and hair progression, but l got to say, I'm a bit more then a little disappointed that Sansa didn't have a whole bunch of Northern braids in her last scenes.

[thelearningcat]

Me through the first half of the finale:

WHY ARE YOU GOING SO SLOW. OH GOD THIS IS SO BORING. WHY ARE WE WATCHING SO MANY PEOPLE WALK AROUND? OH GOOD LOTS OF INTENSE STARING. WHY IS THIS CONVERSATION GOING SO LONG BETWEEN TYRION AND JON. IT WILL NEVER END. OH GOOD WE GET TO SEE MORE WALKING

Me during the second half of the episode:

SEE THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DRAG OUT A BUNCH OF NONESENSE SHOTS. YOU HAVE TO SHOVE ALL YOUR PLOT IN A TINY AMOUNT OF TIME. NOW WE HAVE MORE AWKWARD INTERACTIONS, PLOT HOLES, AND THINGS THAT JUST PLAIN GO UNANSWERED WHEN YOU COULD HAVE ANSWERED THEM.

[thelearningcat]

Anyone who has good GOT fanfiction, I'm now accepting suggestions. I need to wash the last few seasons out of my brain.

[thelearningcat]

So much for the lone wolf dies while the pack survives.

[thelearningcat]

Anyone else notice how all the storylines of the female characters in GOT got real questionable when they stopped going off of the books in season 5?*

Sansa Stark gets raped and tortured by ramsey (which specifically did not apparently happen in the books) in season 5. Then she proceeds to get constantly talked down to and her advice ignored by Jon, notably, but also Dany. Even if it is within reason at first, watching Jon continue it through two more seasons is a bit too much for me to hold my disbelief of characters failing to learn from their mistakes.

Dany starts getting unsubtly hinted at being mad starting in season 5/6. Sure, D&D I can see where before that maybe we can see some subtler hints. But subtlety is apparently lost once the writers go off book. Even then, the mad queen plot is clunky and we are constantly getting conflicting messages. Maybe if you made her a proper sociopath, but the Jorah and Jon relationships defeat that, and you never establish any paranoia or reason for her to kill the average pleb when the city has surrendered. Some badly placed fire to soldiers or targeted attack on the Red Keep that has widespread deaths maybe, but the random murder of citizens? This plotline started in season 5, and I knew it was coming but it was still clunky as hell.

Cersei apparently just was able to grab power and keep it in season5, even with Margaery and the Tyrells around???? Literally the first three seasons (and the next two) we see a woman who is, as her father always said, not as smart as she thought she was (which would bother me more if I didn't hate her character so much). I'm supposed to believe that she somehow kept Margaery from influencing Tommen more without ever seeing her really interact with Tommen in persuasive ways? The only thing Cersei did that seemed within character is dumbly put power in faith militant and hate Margaery simply because. That's not even getting to the fact that we are forced to watch her character be stripped and made to walk through the streets, and then 2 seasons later have to sleep with a man she clearly doesnt want to. Because apparently women can only get character building in GOT through their sexuality.

Margaery is shown to be this intelligent woman from day one, who is extremely persuasive and charismatic, and yet we are supposed to believe she just let Cersei become acting queen? You're trying to tell me her only power lay in her influence of the king? Her family didn't have any guards under their influence or any other individuals?

Arya somehow goes from someone with a clear moral lens to threatening her sister and acting like a sociopath for all of the 7th season? Because apparently we have to wait 8 seasons for two major female characters to get along? (There are arguable exceptions, like sansa and margaery, Sansa and brienne, Dany and Missandei. I can post a separate post on why those don't actually count as exceptions if anyone is interested)

*I have not read the books, so some of this may not be 100% accurate. Let me know and I'll make edits if I can.

[thelearningcat]

Sandor Clegane and Fire Visions

Fiancat sent me this link to a reddit post telling me to read the comments, where I found the above thread. 

And I have to say I love this idea. It just fits so well and adds a dimension of depth to the Hound’s character that goes past “traumatized scarred character” trope. He’s traumatized in part because he was thrown into the fire by his brother, but also because he sees his own death. 

I don’t know what would be more interesting, if he saw his death before then and was always fearful of fire, even as a child, or if it took being thrown into the fire to open up this power, so suddenly not only is twitchy because he knows what it feels to be engulfed, but because he constantly sees visions of horrors in the fire that he doesn’t know what to do with. 

[thelearningcat]

Arya going from aiming to murder to trying so hard to save the mother and child that saved her is an under discussed moment of that episode.

While there are a lot of plot I hate in this episode, Arya's perspective once she leaves the Hound is wonderfully done.

Arya has always had a soft spot for parental figures. But lately we've just gotten a whole lot of murder Arya. This small kindness from a mother with a child absolutely saved her life. And she tried to stick with them. When she found them again, she was rejuvenated to save them, right when she was struggling to even walk.

The tragedy of her seeing their bodies embraced and then the white horse is such a powerful image.

I could be wrong about this, but awhile ago I ranted about how maybe the color of horses matter. I could be wrong, but I still think theres something interesting there. She and the Hound traveled on black horses to Kings Landing. Dany has often ridden on white horses.

It might be a symbol of feminity or it might be a sign of goodness, as Beric also had ridden a white horse before.

So maybe our little assassin will be a lady yet. Or maybe she has an important destiny to fulfill.

Either way, the transition from attempted murder to attempted savior... especially after the last episode had her saying she hated heroes... it's a beautiful dichotomy. Especially in contrast to all the bad plot going on elsewhere

P.s. I do really hate how they went about getting Arya to leave. While the exchange between her and the Hound was adorable and much needed, ultimately we needed a little more to take Arya from being focused on killing the last name on her list (that wasn't saved for the Hound) to saving her own life. Sure we got hints of her doing what she can to survive over taking revenge in the past few episodes and seasons. But it comes off as Arya just being scared, which seems to be D&D's go to emotion for Arya in moments if tension. I would rather have had a meaningful discussion with the Hound saying something like "I didnt drag your ass around the seven kingdoms just to have you die under my watch" then the setup they put in for Arya to separate. especially after he saved her again in e03, and she seemed to tease with "will you leave me to die again" "probably". That shouldn't have come to pass without appropriate levels of sadness.