 I’m not one of the million-plus who signed a petition begging HBO to redo this season of Game of Thrones. The whole concept of a redo is unreasonable and impossible for a multitude of reasons. But it just goes to show how upset over a million people are. I can’t say that I’m upset anymore… just resigned. I sat watching the series finale much like Bran Stark has sat watching the world for the past few seasons: still, unimpressed, apathetic. My wife asked me just before the finale aired what I wanted to happen, and my response was something akin to what Bran Stark would say. “I don’t want anything anymore.” So congratulations to HBO and the GoT writers! I began the season excited for what was to come, and ended the season with Bran Stark as my spirit animal. Kudos! (And by the way, I noticed that little charge come through this morning for another month of HBO NOW. Way to sneak that in before everybody unsubscribes!) I really don’t want to pile on the writers anymore though. It was probably never in the cards for HBO to succeed with this season. All the expectations, all the money, all the egos, and never enough time. Of course, time will tell if George R. R. Martin can do better, and if nothing else we know he will use the advantages of time. And to be honest, the finale wasn’t all bad, was it? Hey, Bronn got his castle! Jon, Ghost and Tormund are gonna be best bros forever! Our man Tyrion is running the show! Arya is going out into the world to have adventures! Brienne and Pod are gonna get to write all sorts of cool knight stories! And Sam Tarly just gave a huge middle finger to the entire Citadel! (Look who’s Grand Maester now, bitches!) It was all really… really… happy. Oddly happy. We entered the season with four Starks, they all survived and get to live the rest of their lives pretty well, considering. All the bad guys died (Night King, Cersei, Batshit Dany). I mean, as the show panned out on the small council with Bronn joking (probably not joking) about prioritizing the funding of brothels, I couldn’t help but have a happy little song playing in my head. It was a tune from my childhood, when everything had a mellow golden glow, and all things were full of hope, dreams, laughter and love. I’d like to share it with you now. But wait, wait, WAIT a second… Hold the door… this wasn’t a happy ending. Now that I think about it, the bad guy won. Seriously, why is everyone so damned happy?
Bran Stark is the most self-centered, sociopathic MFer in all of Westeros. Let’s lay it out:
EVERYTHING IS BRAN’S FAULT! He is likely aware that everything is his fault. AND he’s smugly accepting the royal nomination with jokes. Damn that’s cold. So there you go. Our watch has ended, and the bad guy won, after all. Show me that smile! Thanks for reading, Dylan Lee Peters
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 A brief warning: if you are not up to date with the show, having watched season eight, episode fi—aww seven hells, does it even matter at this point? I’m not boasting, but I did get a fair amount of predictions right last week. (Though they were fairly easy to peg as we get closer to the end). I predicted Dany would become the Mad Queen and torch King’s Landing, and though I did not predict the correct manner of death, I did predict the deaths of Euron, Qyburn, The Mountain, The Hound, Jaime, Cersei, and Varys. I also predicted they would bring the show back to Winterfell for the final episode, as Arya would escape the ruins of King’s Landing to let Sansa know the Mad Queen is coming for her. So I did get some things right, amid the morass of things I got wrong. I invite you to read last week’s blog post here. I hope it’s at least entertaining if not clairvoyant. • • • But moving forward and setting our sights on the series finale, I find myself pondering the epic amount of disappointment this season has wrought. I have my own opinions, of course, but I’ve also talked to a fair amount of GoT viewers and have yet to find someone who thinks the writers have been hitting home runs all season long. People are disappointed with the ending. It’s moving from opinion to fact as fast as Daenerys Targaryen turning from Breaker of Chains to Murderer of Children. I mean, we all knew it wasn’t going to be a happy ending.  But did we think we were going to be left unsatisfied? I can’t say that I did. Mother of Dragons fans were prepared for their heroine’s death, but were they prepared for her story arc to be far less than heroic, and logically problematic. Tyrion Lannister fans thought they would see their man go out as the “god of tits and wine,” not as the biggest fool in all of Westeros. We wanted to see Jaime dead, but redeemed. We wanted to see Cersei dead, but through Stark vengeance. We wanted another Red Wedding. We wanted Joffrey’s poisoning. What we are getting this season can only be described as limp. Quick side note: I’m not advocating for the happy ending. I’m comfortable with “things going wrong” such as the idea of Daenerys breaking bad. But it needs to be earned, and feel organic. With a shortened last season, and so much to tie up, they were never going to have enough time for added character building. They needed to lean on the character arcs of past seasons, so unfortunately Dany going cray-cray just doesn’t make sense. She’s been alone in the past; she’s lost loved ones in the past, yet she still maintained her cool, and her purpose. I mean we just watched her torch a city full of kids and innocent people because she couldn’t get laid. WTF? It was highly out of character, and I’m sorry, but that’s just lazy storytelling. Think of your favorite character, large or small, and tell me you’ve been satisfied with their story this season. There are a few, sure, but mostly you can’t. From the Night King down to Ghost we wanted more. From Varys to Cersei we expected greater intrigue. From Jaime to Jon Snow we just wanted it all to have more gravity. So I’m left to wonder. Is this incompetence? Are the show writers mailing it in? Is this just what happens when there are too many egos, too much money, and not enough time? OR is disappointment the intended theme. Maybe the existential battle we wanted was the Night King versus the living, but the existential battle we’re getting is our heroes versus the inevitability of failure. So that is the theme I’m going to use for predicting episode six. Disappointment and the inevitability of failure. We wanted Jaime dead, but also wanted him to stand as proof that people can change. Except what we got was a reminder that change is hard, and more often than not people don’t change. More often than not an arrogant, callous, incestuous prick is just that and nothing more. Jaime doesn’t learn from his mistakes and make a life with Brienne, he tucks tail and runs back to his sister to be buried under the mess his family made. It’s depressing… but that’s Game of Thrones. Here’s my predictions: Tormund Giantsbane, Yara Greyjoy, Samwell Tarly, Gilly, Little Sam, Ghost and Nymeria – These characters are actually just gone. They won’t pop back up for the final episode to play some important part in defending Winterfell. We won’t get to see what’s going on with their new lives. It’s just done, because sometimes people leave and there is no closure. Sometimes people just go, and it’s awkward or depressing. Sometimes Jon doesn’t pet his dog goodbye, and it just ends that way. Stop crying! There’s no crying in Game of Thrones! Just stare off into the void and do nothing under the unbearable weight of existence like the rest of us… Podrick Payne – Oh he’ll get like thirty seconds of camera time, standing behind Brienne or something, and that will literally be all he does. Because Game of Thrones wants to remind the try-hards of the world that no one actually cares. Bran Stark – Speaking of doing next to nothing, that’ll be what Bran does too. He’ll probably just crawl into a hole under the Weirwood tree in Winterfell, get all comfy in the roots, and spend a generation seeing the world through other people’s eyes. Bran is that one friend you had in high school who was a really smart kid with a bright future, then smoked weed one time and it was over. That kid turned into a burn out, forever lost in a cloud of smoke, talking about weird shit like three-eyed ravens. Someone get Bran a bag of Cheetos for episode six. Greyworm – is going to commit suicide amid the ashes of King’s Landing. This will be the intro scene for the episode. Good times. Davos Seaworth – Davos will be the misplaced coffee cup in episode six. He won’t even be in costume. He’ll just show up in jeans and crocs, throwing out modern jargon like YOLO and resting bitch face (that’s for Daenerys). Jon Snow will laugh like he knows EXACTLY what his man Davos is talking about. Drogon – Dany will inexplicably fly her dragon into the outer wall of Winterfell for some totally illogical reason like she saw Sansa glaring at her, and it just made her lose her mind. Because we all know, when Game of Thrones needs to get rid of the fantasy element of a show, they do so quickly and without any logical reason at all. Can I get a ‘hell yeah’ from the children of the forest? Brienne – is actually going to die from shyness. Tyrion Lannister – is going to get stabbed in the heart by a prostitute. Sansa Stark – is going to stay alive forever just so she can tell everyone she meets “I tooold Jon not to trust her,” and “no I don’t feel sorry for him, he’s stuuupid.” And she’ll say it all in that Sansa Stark voice that sounds like what you’d imagine an eye-roll to sound like if an eye-roll had a voice. She will also do a lot of cross stitching. Gendry and Arya Stark – Arya will hunt down Gendry and try to accept his marriage proposal, because for some reason she inexplicably decided there’s more to life than killing people, even though her character has literally never had one on camera moment of thinking that way, but you know, the Hound said some shit so everything changed. Then Gendry will rip off his face to reveal Jaqen H’ghar, (no I’m not letting this prediction die) who will kill Arya for the many-faced god, because even in our fantasy fiction there will always be assholes killing people for no reason because some god "told" them to. Jon Snow – will do nothing important or intelligent or heroic in episode six. His destiny will be to travel north of the wall and build cabins for underprivileged wildling youth. No one will ever see him again, but he will die one day in an avalanche caused by a dire wolf. Daenerys Targaryen – In the final episode of the series Daenerys will continue losing things, because that’s what she does. She’ll lose her army, lose her dragon, lose her alliance with anyone in Westeros, and continue to lose her mind. She will then be kidnapped and dropped off the side of a boat in a bundle of chains she will be ironically unable to break. And who will do the kidnapping? Bronn of the Blackwater – The final scene of Game of Thrones will be Bronn walking into the deserted former home of the Umbers, Last Hearth. You remember, the place the Night King tacked that dead kid to the wall in a spiral of body parts? Turns out Sansa gave it to Bronn in exchange for the kidnap and murder of the Mad Queen. Bronn will stroll in, arm in arm with some former brothel worker, and sit down in a big chair. He’ll pour himself some wine, raise a glass and then look at the woman. “Don’t look so fucking disappointed,” he’ll say. “I’ve waited a long time for this.” Thanks for reading, Dylan Lee Peters  ORIGINALLY POSTED 12/2/2014 As an author, you need to spend a good deal of time with words. Of course this is beyond an obvious statement, but we often look past the obvious in our lives to the detriment of fundamental mastery. Does a master woodworker not need to obsess over wood? Should the master arborist not have a devoted attention for even the simplest and most common of trees? Should I, if in fact I care about my craft, not look at a word as benign as ‘hello’ and wonder where it came from and why we use it? (According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hello is an alteration of hallo, which came from the Old High German word halâ, used especially in hailing a ferryman). I think it is important for someone in my field to seek this information and have a curiosity about these things. Often, I’ve come across humorous and interesting words. What I wanted to share in this blogpost were a few examples of words and phrases that have left the modern lexicon for one reason or another, and I would argue that they should be brought back. For what reason, you ask? For fun, for perspective, or for no reason other than my own strange curiosity. You are welcome to whichever reason you prefer. “Tell it to Sweeney!” Meaning – what you say when you believe something to be untrue, meaning, tell it to someone who is dumb enough to believe it. Usage – “You say a good book can’t have talking bears? Pfft, tell it to Sweeney!” Etymology – “Sweeney” referenced the myriad of monikers used in England around the 1800s to describe the stereotypical Irishman. Offish Meaning – distant, reserved, aloof Usage – “Isn’t it great how offish Dylan Lee Peters is? I wish I could be that offish!” Etymology – comes directly from standoffish Fuzzled Meaning – Drunk Usage – “Poor Dylan Lee Peters has gone and got himself fuzzled again. Though, it does improve his writing.” Etymology – derivative of the French word fusel, which means bad liquor Bookwright Meaning – A writer of books; an author Usage – “Dylan Lee Peters is the best bookwright ever. Anyone who says different can tell it to Sweeney!” Etymology – from book + wright. The word wright deriving from Old English and meaning ‘related to work.’ Groak Meaning – To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them Usage – “Dylan Lee Peters is going to groak you if you eat that taco in front of him. He will groak you like a dog.” Etymology – I couldn’t find the origin of this word, but had to include it. If you know the origin, please post it in the comments.  |
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