Raffles & Giveaways

@Azurine - They've really done a beautiful job with Theon in the last two seasons. I love that he's still terrified of so much, but he's learning to power through it and do the best he can anyway. I thought it was so gorgeous that he was crying in his last moments. He's flawed and frightened and has screwed up a lot, but he was home with his second family and he did all he could.

@shadowsole honestly, ned stark's hit me real hard. that was when i really got the "wait what" knot in my stomach. similarly, catelyn, even though apparently she's not dead even after getting her throat slit? at least, last time i checked. (hasnt seen the show and read the books years ago) also, as other people have said, the deaths of the direwolves and dragons.

@Shadowsole

Well, an interesting episode indeed...I really wish we hadn't lost Missandei, but I've been expecting it ever since she and Grey Worm had that chat about what they would do after the war. Or at least, I was expecting to lose one of them. (I actually thought it would be Grey Worm who was lost, at the battle last week, but it didn't surprise me that we lost one of the pair, at all.) And I knew we had lost her the instant I saw that Cersei had her.

Far more worrisome (for anyone who likes Dany and her dragons, anyway) is the return of that nasty crossbow--not that they haven't been hinting at that in the opening credits of every episode, since they keep showing it as part of their King's Landing model--and Varys conversation with Tyrion. I am really furious at Sansa right now, for betraying Jon's trust, and at Tyrion, for being so stupid as to tell Varys...but most of all, I'm mad at Varys, who looks like he is about to abandon Dany right when she needs him the most.

And I really, really, didn't like losing Rhaegon...Oh, well, if we wanted a happy-go-lucky story, we wouldn't be watching Game of Thrones, right?


As for Jon and Ghost, I agree compeltely. I just hope it doesn't come back to bite Jon at some point in the next two episodes. Nymeria never really returned to Arya when Arya drove her off, and now Jon has abandoned his Direwolf--the last one any Stark child had--to go North without him, with someone who isn't even a warg looking after the wolf. Not good, Jon, really not good...


Well, the next two episodes should definitely be exciting, and again, I think if Dany is to win, she needs to use stealth, not force. Hopefully she'll realize that in time, before she destroys all of King's Landing, wins the battle--and loses the war. After all, it's difficult to govern a people who are rebelling against you because you burned so many of them to ash, unless you want to keep on burning...



And now on to the question...

What character death has hit you the hardest?

OK...Define "character"?

If we're including the dragons, which definitely have personality and emotions, then it was Viserion, hands down. Dany was one of my favorite characters from the beginning, and I absolutely love dragons (obviously). The dragons had seemed so powerful and invincible, and then suddenly, Viserion was gone, and poor Dany had to watch it happen, and could do nothing to stop it (rather like Rhaegon's fall, actually). Worse still, he died in the North, at the hands of the Winter King, and didn't even get a decent death. He was turned into a zombie dragon within hours of his falling. I cheered at Winterfell when he exploded. At least he's at peace now.


If, on the other hand, we're talking people...then I think it's between three, possibly four:

Ned Stark hit me really hard, because I had not, at that time, read any of the books, and I honestly thought that this show would follow the usual unwritten law of Main Characters: They might get into horrible situations, they might lose everything, they might never be whole again, but they will always, always, survive. (Check out the author Piers Anthony for a better description of that Law, in his Xanth novels.) And Ned was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a Main Character. And one that I really liked, too, which hurt even more. That was when I realized that this was a different kind of series, and absolutely no one was safe.


Myrcella is in the tie, simply because her death wasn't necessary. She was a complete innocent, and the one member of the Lannister family (unless you want to try to count Jaime--which, in fact, I do...most of the time) who was actually more than halfway decent. Not to mention the touching scene right before that, where she tells Jaime she knows he's her father, and doesn't mind at all, and more than that, she loves him AS a father. Talk about giving a character his dream, and then literally snatching it away within seconds.


Jorah. Not lily white, by any means--he was a slaver at one point, after all--but as honorable and decent a man as he could be under the circumstances. I liked him. A lot. And even though I thought I had braced myself for his probable glorious death at some point (after all, he's a knight, and never hesitated to defend Dany against all comers, so it wasn't really hard to guess he wouldn't survive), it still hit hard. I think part of the worst part of it was the fact that he had, literally, survived almost the entire episode. I had begun to think that maybe, just maybe, he'd get through this battle. And then he collapses in the last few minutes of the episode.

But even worse than that was the way the show seemed to try to play with the emotions a bit, with Melisandre starting to walk out in what appeared to be Jorah's direction. She had, of course, brought Jon back to life in an earlier season, and I couldn't help myself. I have a habit of drawing connections and trying to figure things out almost constantly, and her line to Davos about dying before dawn had intrigued me. I kept thinking that she was going to do this massive piece of magic that would take all of her life force. And there she was, walking out alone, and I thought she was walking towards Jorah and Dany, and that that piece of magic she was going to do would bring Jorah back...and then she just kept going, dropped her necklace, and died. Talk about gut-wrenching. I freely admit that that was probably my reading far too much into things, but it was real for me, so it was hard to take.


As for the fourth...I'm not sure if he counts, since he came back, and is very much alive at the moment, but Jon Snow (as he was called then) has been one of my favorite characters since the beginning of the show, when he gave Arya Needle. So when he died at the Wall, I literally cried. In both the show and the book--and I am still hoping that Jon's return is one of the things that George R.R. Martin intends to happen in his books. If Jon's death does count, then it would be the one that is top in my list, followed by that three-way tie.


If it doesn't count, then of the three...I honestly don't know. Each of those three deaths hit hard for a different reason. Emotionally it would be Jorah, I think, but for shock value, it would be Ned. And for fury at the unfairness of it all, Myrcella. Both Ned and Jorah had logical reasons for dying, as much as I wish it were otherwise. Myrcella...did not.

@Shadowsole

@Shadowsole

What character death has hit you the hardest?

Aghhh it's really hard to choose. A lot of deaths really hit hard...especially the dragon's deaths. Neither of them deserved what happened to them, and Rhaegal's was so unexpected too. To kill him off as he was just recovering from the last episode?? God, that was awful.

Another death that hurt a lot was of Hodor, which was just....horrible. It was really horrible to watch him sacrifice himself.

Of course, all of the direwolves deaths we're really awful. Grey Wind, Lady, Summer, Shaggydog, they all had really unfair deaths. They didn't deserve that.

@Shadowsole

What character death has hit you the hardest?

(Please pardon me while I ramble. It's the curse of my INTP tendancies)

First of all, not long into the books, you could see that there was no one main character. Each chapter is told from a different point of view. Plus, at the beginning of the story, there is balance, and therefore, no story. Everyone maintaining that balance had to die so that all supports would be gone and the next generation could create an epic story. So to me, each death was a chess piece that was now out of the game that then left a vacuum to be filled.

And, l'm rather heartless myself, so I look at how deaths further the story.

Therefore, the deaths of the main Starks have all shown the arrogance of their pride in being on the side of "right," so Ned's death because of his pride of honor, well I just shook my head at the way his selfish pride deprived his family and the North of an otherwise decent leader. Then Rob goes and swears and oath and then thinks it means nothing so he also left me shaking my head as he caused the death of those at the Red Wedding. Catelan was also selfishly proud of your family and her belief that she just couldn't be wrong. There are similar parallels on all sides. Everyone is flawed, and so far those flaws have brought about their deaths.

So it is more the innocents that get me. The way Lady Walda was killed by the dogs. Shireen Baratheon, Myrcella Baratheon, and most of all Hodor, slowly torn to shreds in his moment as a hero.

And then there is the Night King. I know he's third on most lists of the evil characters on GoT, but it's not his fault. He was created to go after the men who came to Westeros and were sending the Children of the Forest to Extinction.

So the Night King is not only dealing out revenge for what happened to him, but he is being true to his nature, and as such, one could say that he no more evil that Dany's dragons (who would burn and eat people if they were ever made orphans).

I was kind of hoping he would destroy everyone at Winterfell because of their stupidity, and then march south destroying everything in his path, every dead increasing the size of his army. And no one in the South has a clue how bad it would be. Eventually everyone would be dead and the iron throne would be his. Even Euron wouldn't be as safe at sea as he thought he would be. The Night King would have been able to fly. And his weapon would have done him no good against an undead dragon.

And Essos wouldn't be safe since the Night King now has a way across the water. He doesn't even need to bring an army because he can start building one as soon as he gets there.

Fitting for people who can't put aside their differences to work together. They really dodged a bullet there.

But instead, they let all that die far too quickly. It seemed rather a bit of a let down. I also don't see why Bran worked as bait. After he killed everyone at Winterfell, Bran would have been easy pickings. Pretty bad for a character who to this point displayed brilliant strategy.

@Shadowsole

He was too wrapped up in his need to kill the three-eyed raven. He could't play the smart game. He had to play the Quien-es-más-macho instead.

You know, as evil as Ramsey was, at least he knew how to run a battle. (Did I say that already?)

But apparently at leas some of the women know what they're doing, as Ramsey discovered, and the Night King Discovered, and the High Sparrow discovered.