Fantastical Musings

Warning: SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! Wow, I can't believe it's over! I feel like we just started Season 4 and we're already done! Not cool! I can't wait another year for Season 5! Oh well, at least True Blood starts next week. That being said, let's talk about the finale of Season 4. In general, I thought that this was a really great finale, but after they said "this is going to be the best finale EVER", I was sort of expecting more. I just felt that it lacked a good cliffhanger. Let's break it down. Favorite Moments: Longest Episode Ever - First off, I was really excited that this episode was longer than usual. I think they should make that the standard for finales. Game of Thrones just has so much material to cover, so I think it's great that they gave us an extra twenty minutes to get some extra material in. Happy Father's Day, Tywin - The fact that this episode aired on father's day was brilliant. It was not a good episode fo...

Hm. Not gonna lie, this wasn't my favorite episode. I just don't like the episodes that are all set in one place, and The Wall isn't even my favorite place at that. I mean, this is television, I don't have the attention span for that. Also, I tend to zone out when there's a lot of long fight sequences. So, this episode review is a little biased. That being said, I still think it was a pretty decent episode. Favorite Moments: The Giants - I loved the giants in this episode! Loved them. I mean, whoever designed them should win a Dunkin' Donuts gift card (the highest of honors) or something, because those giants were great. I mean, they were riding mammoths; that's crazy! Plus, they had those giant bows. So. Awesome. What Does Leadership Mean - This is a great scene between Thorne and Jon about what leadership means. I think there's a lot of truth to what he says, besides, it helps humanize Thorne (because no one likes Thorne anyway). Also, Thorne sa...

The Viper and the Mountain. Wow. This was an amazing episode! I mean, I knew how it was going to end, but it was still great. The whole scene was just so stunning. I was stunned. Favorite Moments: It's Not an Owl - The Mole's Town scene was great. I loved it when Gilly was standing at the window with that other woman and the other woman is like "that's just an owl" and Gilly's like "it's not an owl". You should listen to Gilly. Always listen to Gilly, she knows what she's talking about. It was just great. I especially love when the Wildlings are killing everyone and Gilly is hiding with her baby and Ygritte finds them and is just like "hush". Ygritte is tough, but even she isn't going to kill a girl with her baby. And then after that you just see blood running down the wall. Only on HBO guys, only on HBO. Sansa's Playing the Game - To everyone who ever thought Sansa was stupid, HA! I don't know when, I don't kn...

So, I recently bought this Game of Thrones t-shirt because I really love this phrase. 'I do not have a gentle heart', that is such a great and descriptive phrase. In case you don't know 'I do not have a gentle heart' describes Dany Targaryen and it's sort of her motto for season 4 of the TV show. Anyway, I got to thinking about what exactly this phrase means. One of the reasons I like Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire so much, is that the characters are so realistic and well rounded, especially the female characters.  So often in fantasy novels that take place in a medieval world, the female characters take one of three forms: the tough but noble  do-gooder, the evil queen, and the locked in a tower princess. I think this is partly because  medieval writers had an extremely limited vocabulary when describing women, so fantasy writers who look back to that time period think that only two types of women existed in the medieval age: t...

So, as I've been watching Game of Thrones this season, I've been reminded, overwhelmingly, that everyone hates Tyrion Lannister. And, when I say everyone, I mostly mean his family. And, when I say his family, I mostly mean Tywin and Cersei. And when I say Tywin and Cersei, I mostly mean Tywin. I mean, Cersei's hatred for Tyrion is sort of understandable; she believes he killed her mother and killed her son. Even though both those ideas are incorrect, one can understand why she feels the way she feels. Tywin doesn't have that excuse. Tywin is a logical adult, perhaps one of the most consistently logical people in the series. Cersei was a child when Tyrion was born, so one can understand why she felt that he killed her mother (for the record, in case you didn't know, Joanna Lannister did die in child birth with Tyrion and Cersei thinks that this was somehow Tyrion's fault). Tywin, however, was an adult and as such could understand that Tyrion wasn...

Out of all the characters in A Song of Ice and Fire , Sansa Stark particularly intrigues me. I know that a lot of fans of the books think that she's a bit of a wimp, totally naive, and a little slow, but I disagree. Sansa is one of the few characters in the books that develops and changes. Like, I'm not saying that the other characters aren't now in very different places than when the books started, but for the most part, they're all still the same people. Sansa is different; in the first book she was this annoying little brat with all these nonsense ideas about chivalry, but she's grown a lot since then. As the series goes on, she learns how the world works and how people behave and she puts that knowledge to good use. One thing that Starks tend to have a problem with is not learning from their past. I mean, the Stark family is constantly doing things that they should know better than to do. Trusting the Freys? Trusting the Lannisters? And what pa...

Wow. Just wow. I think that was the best episode since the Purple Wedding! Mockingbird just killed it! It was so, so good! This was one of those episodes where you're watching and you're watching and you don't even realize that the episode is about to end and then it ends and you're like: "what??? that's it????". That was basically my reaction to this episode. Here are some other reactions: Favorite Moments: I've Only Loved One Woman...Your Sister - Wow! I knew this was coming, but it was still a major wow . Let me just say that Lysa Arryn was asking to be pushed out of that moon door. I mean, if you thought that Joffrey was crazy it was only because you hadn't meet Lysa Arryn yet. And this episode was not a disappointment. What I appreciated about this was that it was exactly the way it was in the books, right down to the last line: "I’ve only loved one woman, I promise you. Your sister". That's a great thing to say to someon...