By now, half of the educated world has probably tuned into that shocker of a season finale courtesy Game of Thrones and had their world come crashing down ’round their ears.
So, heads up. Massive SPOILER ALERT.
We were having probably the weakest season yet till “Hardhome” came along and knocked three different kinds of stuffing out of us. Somehow they managed to keep it going with the next episode where things got even more heated and made you all question as to how a TV show could afford to make a dragon look so lifelike. And then came episode 10, where everyone barring Tyrion Lannister had their knickers pulled out of their pants and wedged into their heads. Cersei got piss and shit flung at her, Myrcella got poisoned, Dany got jumped by what would appear to be an army of Dothraki Warriors, Stannis got his ass handed to him by Ramsay and poor old Bastard Snow got executed, Caesar style.
Social media was quite rightly filled with outrage, tears and despair. Funnily enough, that didn’t imply to me at all.
As a matter of fact, I realized that I’d more or less accepted every controversial twist the series took this season without so much as a grumble. That was because years of watching Game of Thrones has made me a cold, heartless, emotionless old fool.
So what I’m going to do is take you down a dark yet slightly humorous path on how Game of Thrones more or less Dementor’s Kiss’d me.
Ned’s Dead, Baby:
When Ned lost his err, head(Unintentional Pun) I had to flit back and forth between two episodes to ingest what I’d just seen. I was in shock. Denial. Anger. What had just happened. How could they kill off the dude who’s the only person ON THE BLOOMING POSTER. It broke the hearts of the Starks (I swear this rhyming is coming out of nowhere) and made me very sad. But I stuck by it and to my delight watched 3 dragon eggs hatch thanks to Drogo’s lack of personal hygiene and went running around happily for a good year.
Luwin’s not movin’:
It was sad to watch poor Maester Luwin get the chop courtesy Theon Grejoy who also murdered two farm kids( you should be crying about that, those poor kids probably had hopes and dreams to top Westeros’ IITJEE Entrance Test or something). Poor Renly died too but this time I was cool with it cause he was just plain annoying to begin with.
The One Where Ros Dies:
Someone please tell me you got that reference.
I really like Ros whilst she was on the show. She brought beauty, wit and a lovely sense of humor in a show plagued by death, incest and misery. So when Joffrey decided to write the textbook that Christian Grey would more or less borrow from millennia later, it pissed the holy bejesus out of me.
Sigh, if only Unagi were a thing.
Wedding Rob’bry:
I knew about this but when it did eventually go down, it disturbed me even more than Ned’s death did. I mean I thought Rob was badass, but dear god that accent was the stuff of legends. There’s no one else I know that could pull off “Moothur” and “I donwt wish to mahhrry the Frrey Girll” and not come off as a laughing stock. When they killed his unborn child, his wife and his mother, it more or less began the dissolution of my soul that I’d cherished for years.
It also taught me that life was cruel and unforgiving, but that’s for another day.
She’s my Pigeon Pie!:
By now, I’d caught up with the books and was more or less in sync with what was happening. So when Joff did choke on his Pigeon Pie and die(Dem Rhymz) I was neither sad nor was I ecstatic like my sister, who may have screamed an expletive of joy or maybe two. Joff just lay there with TV audiences cheering and I walked off mildly amused.
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You”:
I read the tale of the Mountain vs The Viper on a plane to Mangalore. I’d really taken to Obyern. He was smart, didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything and was just plain bad-ass. So imagine my delight when I found out that after close to 10 pages of battle during which he took Clegane to school for the most part, that Clegane would miraculously turn it around and use Oberyn’s face like the pillow I pound when I need to vent. No sooner had I finished that particular passage, than we hit a spot of turbulence. It was the biggest middle finger the universe had ever sent my way at the time and I realized that I’d fallen for the series’ allure, yet again.
So when it did air, it was pure torture. I love Pedro Pascal, but the showrunners never gave us a chance to connect with Oberyn the way the book enthusiasts did. Even then, as the viper danced menacingly around The Mountain, I had my head in my hands, waiting for the inevitable. Clearly the showrunners believe that a picture is worth a 1000 words, as I watched Oberyn’s skull get smashed in, on celluloid. The image stayed with me for days, with Oberyn’s screams echoing in my ears. Dang, had they done a good job of it.
I was still thinking about it when Olly let fly an arrow into Ygritte’s chest.
That goes to show you how much I cared about Ygritte’s death.
Theon’s Sansa-nite:
See, you want to point a finger at someone, you point it at Baelish. What do you expect when you marry a lunatic who likes to chop off penises for fun and makes people live in stables? Tyrion was one of a kind, a true gentle-imp. Ramsay is what he was unabashedly all his life; a bastard. So when he forced himself onto her and made Theon watch, as uncomfortable as it made me feel, I kinda understood that Ramsay felt what he was doing was his right. Princesses were married off at an extremely young age during the medieval times and more often than not against their will, so kudos to the show for bringing to light what has been quite conveniently lost in the pages of history.
I wasn’t shocked by it. Years of watching the show had turned me into the cynical old fart that I currently am.
So when Cersei did her best Jenny Agutter impression from Walkabout in the season finale, I was mildly shaken but not too scarred like the rest. The fact that I was thinking of Coupling references when she was made to go through what she had to, spoke volumes about what an asshole I am.
However, the one that clinches it was when Olly aka Westerosi Brutus struck the fatal blow into Jon’s chest. As he lay dying in the (ironically) snow, I couldn’t help but wonder if Olly’s heart did indeed skip skip skip skip skip skip skip, a beat.
So, thank you Martin, Weiss and Benioff. Life is clearly a lot brighter with you buggers around.
Pricks.
Originally published at Pot Full Of Mold
