The Lust of the Starks – Part 1

Winterfel Pyre Funeral Season 8 804 2

Hello.

This is a Twitter post. @Axechucker of house @WatchersOTWall, at your service. In lieu of a Twitter pun title, I went a little more obvious.

So let’s do this.

There was the usual babble -n- build-up to the episode…

pat u silly

And Now Her Watch is Ended.

Um.

Some people talkin’ ’bout a leak. Most of my peeps weren’t having it.

And of course people were still talkin’ shit ’bout last Sunday…

YES YOU ARE.

Y’all too much.

Episode prep was on!

And before we knew it, the episode bega—

oh my god

NOT.

NOW.

MACE.

….now that’s disrespectful of course there’s sexual content just look at Pod

“Previously on Game of Thrones…”

LET’S GO!

I kinda questioned why they still used blue tiles after the Night King’s demise, but ehhh.

Still the Gold standard.

Basically “With Iain Glen…” means Jorah’s corpse.

So we open on one of those corpses…

Well that played out like a fine tragedy.

…alright, let’s not get crazy dramatic here, Mak. Little Bear’s heart was fine.

She died with a broken leg, spine, hip…

Then the time was nigh for torching the pyres…

I thought the exact same thing!

LOOK, IF THE IRONBORN CAN FIND WOOD FOR THEIR DAMN THOUSAND SHIPS ON PYKE—

Kit channeling some Shakespearean shit there.

Jupiter’s cock!

P.S. GHOST LIVES!!!

#GhostBarked

So then we join a post-funeral feast…

Erraone dead! Triple rations for all!

Alcohol.

Speaking of which, Sandor and Gendry make a… somewhat odd drinking duo.

To our collective shock, Dany calls out Gendry!

—and HANDS OUT STORM’S END LIKE CANDY!

Lord Gendry Baratheon is a real thing!

Facts!

The revelry began to kick up a notch! Jaime even got Brienne to start drinking!

Davos and Tyrion have a brief chat concerning Melisandre & the Lord of Light…

No one really tweeted about it. THIS IS DAVOS ERASURE. But I really liked the line, “We still have us to contend with.”

Tyrion approaches Bran and his wheelchair…

Tormund gives Jon some bro-hugs…

“To the Dragon Queen!” gets a decent cheer…

“To Arya Stark!” gets a HUGE CHEER!

No.

And suddenly Brienne, Jaime, Pod, and Tyrion are playing drinking games! The Never Have I Ever game that… apparently… never gets old. Tyrion perpetually stuck in college.

I mean, has no one heard of BEER PONG?

But it was Jaime and Brienne’s chemistry that had us all sitting up and taking notice.

Pod totally ships them.

Ron Howard: Jaime and Brienne were definitely going to fuck.

Tyrion then has to ask the VIRGIN question…

“Which one of you cowards shit in my pants?”

Tormund … yeah. He was a rollercoaster of emotion.

WYLLA AND HER GREAT BIG TEATS.

…Wait, no, that was Bessie.

Sandor is NOT a happy drunk, however.

Soon, my pretty pink penis. Sooooon….

(And then, as if on cue…)

SANSA sat down with SANDOR… and the SanSans may have reacted. A little.

Basically.

Fucking confirmed.

HOUNDSIGHT.

David. Go to your room.

We Have No Proof She Did Not.

….said a thousand fanfics opening this very night.

P.S. Don’t think we don’t know what Podrick Payne was up to in the background…

He had a foursome in K.L. The lad’s pacing himself.

Outside…

Everyone is in a drunken revelry.

Winterfell was basically becoming the Wolfriders/Go-Backs Orgy from ElfQuest.

(No, you don’t have to understand that reference. But uber-nerd points if you do!)

“Lust of the Starks,” like the title above says! Can’t you read?!

So yeah. Everyone is in a drunken revelry… except Arya Frackin’ Stark.

And by the way, miss, the new Lord of Storm’s End’s got questions!

“That’s not me.”

Meanwhile, let’s check in LIVE with the newly-minted Lord of Storm’s En–

Sorry, bro.

OUCH.

I mean…

Two episodes left? I’m gonna say probably not.

That said, if anyone thinks Arya bedding down (experimentally I might add) with Gendry for one night was her planting a flag in her sexuality, then y’all ain’t known that many gay people I’m just saying.

ANYWHO LET’S GET BACK TO JAIME AND BRIENNE SHALL WE

IT’S BLOODY HOT IN HERE

WHY YES IT IS

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Erm.

Well let’s see!

THIS VERY SENSUAL NIGHT CONTINUED AS DANY went to JON’s chamber…

HARLOT

It’s soon pretty evident that Jon… cannot.

Yarp.

But enough sadness! Let’s get back to JAIME and BRIENNE who are still SLEEPING TOGETHER…

…but his look is not one of contentment.

DIS WORRIED ME.

So the next day… everyone is gathered around a central table looking appropriately grim…

…The new prince of Dorne pledges HIS support?

Poor Quentyn!

(whispers) …I knew it.

ALWAYS!

And Dany is not happy. But Jon puts his foot down. “What you command, we will obey.”

…That didn’t go over super well with his sibs.

And so, soon after in the GODSWOOD…

Y’ALL STOP

BUT JON CAN’T NOT TELL TRUTHS.

So in Winter Town, Jaime and Tyrion share a drink and… gossip, basically.

ENTER BRONN.

They’re in Winter Town.

Not so violent as THAT, but…

PUNCH!

…Geoff. If you can’t behave, I SWEAR…

I will send you to your room with no supper like I did your brother David.

I THOUGHT THE TWINS WOULD BE A PROPER “DOUBLE” AS WELL!

Y’all. Can you imagine Lord Bronn Blackwater was the Lord of the Crossing? I MEAN

Maybe that’s what he gets in the end.

Yup.

The next day…

Looks like SANDOR CLEGANE has had enough of the Norff!

STRANGER finally making an appearance! Good horse.

And then the show gobsmacks us all again as Arya rides right up beside him!

LOOKS LIKE THEY BOTH GOT SOME UNFINISHED BUSINESS IN K.L. AND I AM ALREADY FRICKIN’ HYPE.

I too found that slightly odd.

We may never know.

So Sansa meets with Tyrion…

Tormund and Jon meet in the Winterfell courtyard for a fond farewell…

But the thing I noticed was—IS GHOST MISSING AN EAR??

FAREWELL TORMUND!

(Though maybe you could go find Ghost’s missing ear first?)

Sam and Gilly approach. And they have news!

Yup.

My prediction is that’s the last we’ve seen of Sam and Gilly. (And then Sam writes the Song of Ice and Fire. Congrats, Samlly! You survive!)

So Jon leaves with Davos…

…but without Ghost.

And yo.

People lost their S H I T.

I feel like this either is the harbinger for Jon’s demise… or he will in fact reunite with Ghost north of the Wall. I think it’s one or the other.

To Be Continued!

Axechucker

21 Comments

  1. Thank you for these roundups, Axechucker! I have very little time to spend on Twitter, so I really appreciate them. 😃🐺

  2. That Ghost scene was indeed sad and disturbing. Jon treated Ghost like Bran treated Meera. Both are men who claim to no longer be Starks.

  3. Hodors Bastard,

    There was more to Jon’s look than just not saying goodbye. His look was like he couldn’t face him. He couldn’t look Ghost in the eye, because of what he had to do now. I’m still working on what that meant. Did that mean he’s abandoning his Northern roots by going full Targ? I too was hoping he would show some affection, but I watched Jon’s facial expressions closely again. He looked away with regret. He couldn’t look Ghost in the eye as he took his path going south to follow his queen Dany. At least Ghost didn’t just wander off this time leaving Jon like what happened before he met Ygritte. It was the other way around this time where Jon wandered off. I’m hoping Jon is able to re-join Ghost up north after he finishes following Dany to KL.

  4. Hodors Bastard,

    I’m convinced Jon will go back to Tormund and Ghost at the end. He’s not like the rest of them, he’s ambitious maybe but he’s not manipulative and you have to be that way to take the throne. Even his own family are manipulating him behind the scenes because they have their own agenda – not one has asked him what he wants. I expect once all is said and done he’ll be sick of their scheming and all it has wrought and he’ll break the wheel by leaving it all behind. I think back to Martin’s comments about the best person to sit the throne may not be the one we think deserves it – Jon is too honest to be King and I can’t see him being forced to marry for the realm etc. He needs a nice wilding girl like Val and wide open spaces where he can run free with Ghost. For me, that would be the best ending…assuming he survives the next 2 episodes of course.

  5. watching #BRAIME sail then sink during the course of one episode, my heart can’t take it, ugh.

  6. I was also so not onboard with Jon casually brushing Ghost off like that.

    If I didn’t know better I’d say that’s some foreshadowing that Jon’s about to either die or get corrupted by Throne.

    …. Sadly it was probably just laziness.

  7. Tron79: I’m still working on what that meant. Did that mean he’s abandoning his Northern roots by going full Targ?

    Much to ponder, indeed. Will Jon go full Targ? Will Bran go full 3ER? Will Arya go full Faceless? Except for Sansa (?), each have drifted away from their Stark legacy. No Stark has a direwolf anymore and perhaps their ties to the north are fading. I don’t have confidence that Jon, Arya or Bran will ever know “home” again. Perhaps Winterfell is GRRM’s Shire?

    kathy: He needs a nice wilding girl like Val and wide open spaces where he can run free with Ghost.

    That would be ideal, wouldn’t it? I can digress quite easily on that thought!

    Oh, what I would give to be a listening leaf on the weirwood tree after Bran told Arya and Sansa about Jon! There is a scheme going on between them, which will play out very soon.

  8. Tron79,

    Yes, the wolves always = stark identity. And Jon didn’t just leave Ghost behind, he left every one of his friends. It feels either like a “kill the boy moment” or a “I’m now a Targaryen bye” moment

  9. kathy: He needs a nice wilding girl like Val and wide open spaces where he can run free with Ghost.

    I’m starting to think that’s the point of Val in the books. Yes, she’s likely to be his version of Daario and is not going to survive long-term, but perhaps she’s more than that. Perhaps she and Ygritte will be the reminder some day for book Jon, that he was happiest with the Free Folk. Which he was. This is where he was accepted most for being who he was, without labels attached to him. And like they said in the show, Ghost was too. I don’t think it a coincidence this was the biggest time period in the books where Jon lost contact with Ghost. I think that was intentional by GRRM to show that Ghost is happy and free out there too.

    Maybe that’s where everything is headed for Jon in both versions. My eyebrows raised when they wrote the dialogue for Tormund to say “you never know” in this past episode.

  10. kathy,

    I completely agree. And I also thought that Jon will be the one to actually break the wheel and he will finally, finally choose his own path. His life up until now has always been decided by other people – Ned decided he will be raised as a bastard (understandable and all), Sam decided to make him the Lord Commander, Davos and Mel decided to resurrect him, the North (and Robb in the books) decided to make him KitN. He will now decide to turn down the biggest job of all and he will go find his own family, with a people he learned to appreciate.

  11. For me the best outcome would be for Jon to return beyond the wall ‘in the real North ‘ and live out his days with his ghosts (4 legged as well) and stay in Ygrittes cave. I don’t care who sits on the throne anymore as long as it’s not Jon.

  12. Love this discussion.

    I really, really hope the show kind of does a 180 and gives the direwolves their rightful due at the end. They’re meant to be extremely symbolic in the books.

    My dream ending for Jon is indeed returning to the north to be with Ghost and Tormund. I fear not, because in much of traditional literature, someone returned from the dead must eventually pay the price for their unnaturally long lifespan; it always comes with a cost. But I would love for Jon to simply say, “I’ve done all I can, now I can rest,” and then retire in the north.

    But he’s got to survive these final two episodes. And I don’t think the odds of both he and Dany making it out alive are very good.

  13. I absolutely love these collections of tweets each week, thank you for doing this!

  14. Hodors Bastard: Much to ponder, indeed. Will Jon go full Targ? Will Bran go full 3ER? Will Arya go full Faceless? Except for Sansa (?), each have drifted away from their Stark legacy. No Stark has a direwolf anymore and perhaps their ties to the north are fading. I don’t have confidence that Jon, Arya or Bran will ever know “home” again. Perhaps Winterfell is GRRM’s Shire?

    Well, one could argue that Sansa is much more Litterfinger or Cersei than a true blue Stark (I mean she just dropped information that will divide family members after all, not very Stark)… all the them have changed… well I would argue they have all changed a lot except Jon. He is the one that has changed the least from his earlier self.

    Jon might be leaving his Stark ‘self’ behind, but he is still the most Stark of the Starks… and Ned2.0 isn’t going to do well in the South, the Game of Thrones will be as wearing to him, if not more so, as it was to Ned.

    Thanks for the twitter roundup, it is fun seeing the RT reactions, and I got the Elfquest reference, brownie points! Wish that series would get an adaptation! It is great and complete! 🙂

  15. I really appreciate that you included the poignant tweet about Rachel Held Evans. Thank you.
    And thank you for the hard work collating them all. It’s a train wreck to read after the episodes, let alone, curate them!

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