Happy October everyone! Over on the Watchers on the Wall site, I have a new feature that hopefully is in sync thematically with this spooky, Halloween-focused month.
My feature talks about haunted Harrenhal and the blood-soaked bargain forged between Arya Stark and the mysterious and mercurial Jaqen H’ghar. One of those two was getting in over their head – and I suggest that the one out of their depth wasn’t Arya.
This is the final post in a series talking about the direwolves on Game of Thrones (with some references to their analogous narratives in the books of A Song of Ice and Fire.) For more info on what this post is about, you can check out Part One. I tried to constrain myself to a five-part series, but part four was split up among two separates posts, because I was too verbose.
Nymeria hates verbosity as much as she hates Lannisters.
If you’ve wandered here without having read any of the previous essays talking about the direwolves, here’s the Too Long; Didn’t Read summation.
The direwolves on Game of Thrones appear to be an endangered species, and though it might not be correct to say that I’m okay with that, it is entirely fair to say that I’m not not okay with that. If there’s weakness in the adaptation of the direwolves’ narrative (which is hard to say definitively since there are more of the books to come out) then that weakness is probably on par with the other shortcuts taken in adapting A Song of Ice and Fire.
This post is part of a continuing series on the direwolves in Game of Thrones. I’ll also be discussing the books so if you’re not up on either versions, this is your spoiler warning.
I’ve been discussing the various fates of the direwolves, and had planned on writing a single post about pairs of direwolves (so, six direwolves would be covered in three posts) with an intro post and a wrap-up post making for five posts total. This worked well with the dead pair of direwolves (Lady and Greywind) and the dead-on-the-show direwolves (Shaggydog and Summer) but when I started writing about the still-living Nymeria and Ghost in the last post, I wrote so much about Nymeria I had to split my discussion of that pair into two posts.
So this is the second part of a fourth entry in a five-post series. And it will be all about Ghost. Or rather, mostly about Ghost. (I reserve the right to refer back to other wolves.)
But there will be no more math, I promise.
This is the penultimate post in my series of articles talking about the direwolves on HBO’s Game of Thrones (and the literary source A Song of Ice and Fire.)
I’ve mostly been defending the fact that the majority of the direwolves are dead and that the showrunners are probably doing a reasonable job with them in the adaptation, although that’s not a popular fan-held position.
Just a reminder, I’ll be talking about the show and the books. So spoilers abound if you’re behind on your viewing or watching.
Two posts ago, I talked about the Stark direwolves Lady and Greywind, and the most recent post in this series featured Shaggydog and Summer. Up next are the last two wolves in the story, Nymeria and Ghost.
Happy International Batman Day! (Or, if you prefer to be grim and moody on this thematic day, you don’t have to be happy. I’m not the boss of you.)
Commissioner Jim Gordon: Virtue Signaling
Back in 2015, I started to write annual blog posts about my favorite costumed comic book hero, Batman, as a means to celebrate the September-event Batman Day – a day I suppose was created by the marketing department at DC Comics.
This is the third post in a five-post series on the direwolves in HBO’s Game of Thrones (with corresponding plot details from the books of A Song of Ice and Fire.) You can get more details from my initial post – basically I’m discussing the Stark direwolves with a speculative eye on what might be happening in the remaining episodes and unpublished books. (And I might be defending some decisions that the showrunners have made.)
Them good doggos.
The last post was about Lady and Greywind, the two direwolves whose stories are faithfully recorded in the books and show. This post will be about Shaggydog and Summer, the wolves that belong to Catelyn Stark’s youngest sons Rickon and Bran.
This post is the second in a five-part series talking about the direwolves on Game of Thrones (with some comparisons expected to their analogous storylines in the source epic A Song of Ice and Fire.) For full details on what I’m all up about, feel free to skim Part 1 and then return here. No sweat – whatever you want to do, it’s cool.
As I asserted in my lead-in post, I’ll be talking about pairs of direwolves, and the first pairing to be featured will be Lady and Greywind, the direwolves of the two eldest trueborn Stark children, Sansa and Robb respectively.
This post (and the four to come after, sorry) will be discussing not only HBO’s Game of Thrones, but the book series that it’s based on. If you’re not up on the show, or are holding off reading A Song of Ice and Fire (until all the books are completed in the 22nd century) then maybe this series of essays isn’t for you.
I mean, I can’t promise that this series of essays is really for you even if you are up-to-date. I’ll probably say some dumb stuff.
Jon says dumb stuff too, according to Everyone.
The Puppies That Were Promised
In the pilot episode of Game of Thrones, immediately following an exercise in Northern justice, direwolf pups are found – one for each of the children of Ned and Catelyn Stark (and one for Jon Snow.)
“Lord Stark,” Jon said. It was strange to hear him call Father that, so formal. Bran looked at him with desperate hope. “There are five pups,” he told Father. “Three male, two female.”
“What of it, Jon?”
“You have five trueborn children,” Jon said. “Three sons, two daughters. The direwolf is the sigil of your House. Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord.”
— A Game of Thrones, Bran I
We’re finally out of the month of April, so it’s less-than-one-year until the premiere of Season Eight Game of Thrones. It feels like it’s been forever.
The final season will no doubt feature exciting battles and conflict resolutions, but I expect that most of the characters (depending on how fast they get killed off) will be able to hit some narrative beats to bring their over-arching storylines to a satisfying (if possibly bittersweet) conclusion.
(This post will be talking about HBO’s television show Westworld. Consider this your spoiler warning.)
In the most recent episode of Westworld, William aka the Man in Black (played by Ed Harris) had a brief conversation with the confederado Major Craddock, who had been touting his favorable relationship with death, since he’d been killed by Dolores Abernathy’s gunslinging companion, and had been resurrected.
I Can't Possibly Be Wrong All the Time 