To the pain!

Well, that's exactly the point, isn't it? He specifically intellectually knew that he should not fall into that kind of trap, but in the moment, he emotionally couldn't stand back and let his brother be killed. Same heart-over-head issue that arguably killed his brother and father. Dumb, but hardly unrealistic: humans…

Surprises are vastly overrated. And it always seems like fans want it both ways: constant, intricate, evidence-based theorizing about what's coming, and then getting upset when they get it right and the surprise is ruined.

I mean, they're tier-one nobility. They're RAISED to be entitled little so-and-sos. As moving as it genuinely was when Jon gave the order that Rickon be buried in the crypt next to Ned, I couldn't help but think of the piles and piles and piles of bodies that weren't getting special palanquin treatment. (Okay, okay,…

Go back to the hugging, dammit!

Even sadder is that he probably had very few memories of the time when his family was whole and happy and together.

Yeah, I wondered why there weren't a lot of Northern guys defecting to the Starks. Ramsay would be the worst boss. I know nobody wants to be on the losing side, but I wouldn't think many would want to be on the flaying side either.

Yeah, I thought that moment where Tormund saved him and then said "hey" or whatever was pretty clearly in answer to Jon going full kamikaze. Which is not actually a good state of mind in which to be leading an organized, effective attack. Jon's damn lucky cooler heads (Sansa!) prevailed.

I mean, that's kind of Jon's thing: being just like dear ol' dad. I'm sure Jon did it on purpose as a Father's Day tribute. ("Well, it's not smart, but it was Pop's favorite battle move…")

Even after Aemon's talk and everything Jon's gone through (he lives, he dies, he lives again) I don't think he has killed the boy within. He's still got that Hufflepuff heart. Not to mention those big-brother instincts.

Nothing burns me out faster than the endless nitpicking in fandom. Last week people were complaining (not here, elsewhere on the interwebs) that the episode didn't have the twist they were expecting, and this week I've already seen complaints because this episode did have an expected twist.

Using cover in battle is considered highly dishonorable.

True, I never thought of it that way (the Godly way). I guess I saw that and just thought "Targaryen," aka super special incestuous blonde people, but you're right that the Dothraki might think deity. (Then again, they could always be thinking "witchcraft," and wasn't there a whole thing where the Dothraki hate…

I don't know about that. Littlefinger basically came from nothing, and nobility takes care of their own. (For all the great houses like to murder each other, if it ever came down to a smallfolk rebellion they would ally up and put that shit down fast.) Plus, Sansa is Robin's cousin, and she knows LF murdered Lysa.

His tiny, floppy-haired dead body. :(

I was so touched by how much Jon obviously did care for Rickon. Might seem obvious, but he hasn't seen the kid in six years, and even then Rickon was just the baby of the family. Jon's move might've been stupid, but it was a heartwarming stupid.

Honestly the one that bothers me is why all the Dothraki are following and fighting for Dany. Just "she has a cool dragon" doesn't make sense after the first hour or two once the spectacle has worn off. What are they getting out of it? She doesn't like rape and pillage and plunder, which as Yara put it—different…

Throw in e. coli and you have a golden trifecta of shitting-yourself-to-death!

Yeah, for all the "shocking" deaths on GOT—Ned, Robb, Oberyn, etc.—they came as fitting culminations of character arcs. If anything, GRRM's willingness to let characters feel the full consequences of their actions makes his writing more "literary" than most, more escapist/wish-fulfillment genre writing.

There's nothing new under the sun. And as much as people like to say GRRM delights in subverting tropes and writes more "realistic" fiction, that's not really true. But neither realism nor originality are the metrics of well-written fiction people take them for. For me personally, what matters most is the execution,…