He starts striding down the street and I yell at the TV OH YEAH MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK AND YOU’RE GONNA BE IN TROUBLE YOU GOAT-FACED BITCHES.

Aaaaand that was the shortest-lived joy I’ve ever felt because screw you, show. Screw you for denying me further Barristan the Hot Bold, when in the books we have pages and pages left of him, hours of entertaining loveliness courage and snark profundity. I hate everything right now. Drogon needs to get his ass back in town and start burning some shit. Start with whatever moron sent an old-ass knight out into the streets without armor when masked freakjobs have been slitting throats left and right.

All power is its own undoing.

Tommen is king. He stands protected by Westeros’s greatest knights, cloaked in white and helmed in gold. His wish is everyone’s command, and his decrees carry the weight of law. And he stands on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor, thwarted by peasants who scream obscenities at him. (He’s not a bad guy, Tommen, just profoundly sheltered and young.) He’s unwilling to cut them down, and so he turns around and walks away. He goes home, to his mother and his wife, who claw at him.

Roose Bolton bought everything for his son, including a bride. He bought Sansa Stark, heiress to Winterfell and beloved by the North, to legitimize Ramsay’s claim to the lordship and lands. He bought her, Ramsay fell in love with her, and she lights candles in the crypts, beneath the stones. Rise up, Littlefinger tells her, and take them all. The fires are burning again, and no one will ever put them out.

Danaerys bought the greatest fighters that have ever lived. She bought the might of the Unsullied to free slaves and win thrones, and they die in the streets, because an army is not a police force, and a fighter is not a guard, and there are too many enemies all around them now. Their might cripples them, and they die in the dark.

And the High Sparrow wants to defend the people. Cersei has confused stirring shit with forward motion, and thinks the High Sparrow will serve himself, creating chaos. That would actually be the best case scenario, the High Sparrow serving himself. Cersei bought a cynic, brought it home, opened the box, and found a believer instead. He wants to defend the people and dispense the Justice of the Gods. How awful, when someone does exactly what he told you he would do.

Quick takes: ONE GOD, ONE KING, ONE REALM, FUCKERS. I have been mad about Stannis Baratheon for ages, because duty will do it for me every time, because his friendship with Davos is the Great Westerosi Bromance of Our Time, because when nobody else would do the right thing and help the Night’s Watch he showed up and did a goddamn job. And the entire scene with him and Shireen is why: Faced with the inevitable, faced with all the best advice, he did what he had to do instead. He told everyone in the room to go to hell, and he saved his daughter. Stannis and Shireen is one of my favorite things about the show, as is Melisandre just straight-up telling Selyse to back off the kid.

Also? “Mother didn’t want to bring me.” I try to have some sympathy for Selyse but things like that make me want to drop-kick her into the Rat Cook’s hole.

Speaking of Melisandre, I am not loving the new “the way I get my power is to fuck someone powerful” line of work she’s into. That’s some played-out Lady Macbeth crap. She’s more than that.

Shut up, Tyrion. Shut up, Jorah. And (blasphemy) shut up, Bronn.

Yawn to the Sand Snakes. I’m glad Indira Varma is getting more time since it seemed a shame to waste the actress on a bit part, and Keisha Castle-Hughes is my homegirl, but … yawn to the Sand Snakes if all they get to do is wander around being dressed spectacularly impractically for the environment.

I was JUST thinking that it seemed like Littlefinger genuinely  cared about Sansa and wanted to see her succeed, and then the inappropriate macking happened. I hope the last thing she does before she takes her rightful place as QUEEN IN THE NORTH is to geld his sleazy ass.

He’s not wrong, though. Powerful men can be outmaneuvered. Powerful men can be killed. Beneath the city, in the crypts, through the alleys, power is finding its opposite, and everything that won you glory cuts you down in the end.

A.