Katsullivan

Doubt Matthew is coming back. LOL. But gosh, the show is really trying to pit Maggie and April fans against each other, isn't it? Yeah, they have stuff to work out. That's what makes it interesting. If they were a perfect puzzle-matching fit, it'd be boring. Their money and religion conflicts was a lot of what made them so appealing to me. (The rest was their backstory - even though Grey writers tend to forget it, they were best friends who cohabited for a long time before they started dating, and they had their own separate history from that other hospital before moving to Seattle Grace; also their chemistry and them being interracial.) Plus it would have been awesome to see one successful marriage in Grey's that worked through ups and downs. Give a little hope out there to struggling couples everywhere.

Because racism is as American as apple pie.

LOL. That's crazy brave for network TV. Any comic fans care to confirm/deny? You can redirect me to the appropriate thread.

As someone who is rooting for Jackson and April to get back together, and really hopes that this Jaggie phase will run its course, I won't mind if April got some herself. Technically, she's only ever had s-- with Jackson. Considering the fact that he up-ended her life on her wedding day, that's all sorts of wrong. This is why I'll always keep coming back to Shondaland. I think that might have been the point? For a long time, Mer was anti-Jo and passive aggressively saw her as a rival for Alex's "person"-hood. So of all people, Mer was the most susceptible (in Jo's mind) believe Dr. Evil's twisted version of the truth. So there were real stakes there, as opposed to, say... Huh. Who are Jo's female friends, come to think of it? Edwards is gone and Jo never really made any friends with the older doctors. Huh. Deluca.

I guess since they're both black, it's easy to forget they're not actually related to each other. ?

The episode before it was Lorna who got the gratuitous shirtless scene. As long as they don't force us to see Reed shirtless, I'm good. I think some philosopher once argued that refusal to fight or kill in certain circumstances can be immoral. In this case, the mutants are fighting for their survival. It's hard to see how it can be worse than this when mutants are rounded up and used for guinea pigs in Trasks's shady lab without any recourse or intervention. Mutants already face systemic discrimination and persecution. Marcos was right - it can be worse. What he doesn't understand is that it will get worse regardless of what they do. Andy's issues aren't manhood issues. He was bullied in high school for many years and was powerless to do anything to stop it. On top of all the PTSD that comes with that baggage, life now "gifted" him with mutant powers - and made him a member of the persecuted mutant class. Perfect storm. Is it confirmed that the von Struckers were incestuous? Because then ... ewww. LOL! I kept laughing at that part. What was stopping Blink from walking away from the barbed wire and opening a portal? What was stopping John from crawling under it? The same thing that stopped the Frost triplets from being part of the Abduction plan and making it 100x more effective by simply mind-controlling their targets. Wasn't too excited. Is Esme's body even cold in the ground? I don't have a bone in their love triangle, but to all appearances, even though John was attracted to Blink, he and Esme loved each other and had a genuine relationship. To have him move on so quickly after her death just struck me as stone cold.

On US TV, seeing a black woman get brutally murdered on repeat is popcorn entertainment. Seeing her getting pleasured, even more from a white man, is family-unfriendly.

If there is one thing I'm sure of from watching GRRM spend years on novellas, short stories about dragons young and old --- basically coloring every blank Targaryen corner of this world with red words while neglecting every other House in Westeros... it's that there's no way he's not ending this series with the Targaryens at the top.

That doesn't translate to the kind of Robb+Jon-esque "mad dash for vengeance" scenario that's being painted of Sam here. Nor can I imagine someone who lived through a time where 5 Kings warred across Westeros would be too bent out of shape over whether Dany was "rightful" Queen or not when she executed two men that volunteered to die. Most of the outrage over Tarlys's death will be on this side of the screen.

Am I the only one who missed this Robb+Jon-esque Brotherly Love between Sam and Dickon?

Speaking for myself, I see a huge difference between a full Targaryen raised in Essos in exile, and a Targaryen with a Stark mother whose very existence is a text-book case of lands/realms being acquired by "marriage conquest". The North will contemplate Lyanna Stark, who has turned from a symbol of Targaryen brutality on the North to a foolish girl who dishonored her family by breaking her engagement to Robert Baratheon, allowed herself to be seduced by the Mad King's son, started a war and inevitably lost the North to the Targaryens. I imagine that a lot of Northern Lords will wonder just how much or little Jon Snow really knew about his birth, and how convenient that this discovery was made at the arrival of his last remaining Targaryen relative, with her (their) army and her (their) dragons. They will wonder at how "easily" he bent the Knee, putting the North in her power and squashing any chance of a Northern rebellion against the Targaryens. Like if the North are going to go full-Targaryen-paranoia, then let's have them go all the way. If the North are going to hate Dany for being the Mad King's daughter, they are going to be revolted at the idea that they inevitably crowned a Targaryen their King, and that this same "cuckoo-in-the-nest" Targaryen boy has handed the North back to his family. I love the thing she did with her hands at the end of that scene, when she like wrings them, then flattens them on the table while trying to not to look as obvious as she was being. I burst out laughing. She's a great physical actress and it's moments like that that I wish she had a stronger actor than Kit to play off against. She shines in her scenes with Dinklage and Iain and Nathalie, but with Kit, she's doing all the heavy-lifting. Slightly OT, but I really wish they had got someone stronger and taller, even if he wasn't as pretty, to play Jon.

Not that it matters now, but in the books, Jon didn't get assassinated because he made unilateral decisions, he got assassinated because he intended to break his vows and wage war against Ramsay Bolton. That would be awesome but somehow, with the hesitation with which Jon knocked on her cabin door, I don't think so. I would personally love to see a Northern-style/weir-wood wedding for a change.

This is such a brilliant arc. We get a hint of that in the books when Sansa conspires to frame that singer for Lysa's murder, and is complicit by her silence in Sweet Robin's poisoning. If the show-runners wanted to truly keep to the spirit of her arc, if not the actual details, they could have transferred that to her season 5 storyline. Her whole reason for marrying Ramsay was because Littlefinger convinced her that he could be "tamed". Well, let's see her try to do that. Let's see her adopt a veneer of ruthlessness to survive. Sansa should already hate Theon for what he did to her brothers. It would have been easy enough to convince her to either look the other way, or even encourage his torture. I don't agree that the writers didn't take this arc because they weren't thinking about the long game. They didn't take this arc because they've proven that they have a very elementary way of telling stories and of developing characters. Plus D & D see to have a personal hard-on for Sofie Turner/Sansa that would never allow them to write this for the character. She had resolved to fight for the North regardless. So yes, the line is significant.

She says that after Jon has already bent the knee. There's no need for her to conquer the North at that point; she already owns it. Did we all miss the part where Dany told Jon that she was going to fight the Night King before Jon bent the knee?

I'm pretty sure the biggest factor was that the Lannisters made the Boltons an offer they couldn't refuse.

LOL. Fair enough. Nothing. Kings don't mess with the North for a reason. Let's hope the King in the North doesn't have any Red Weddings to attend in the future. And that there aren't any fair-weathered Northern Lords that can be persuaded to turn against their King... Oh wait.

Just as none of the houses wanted to align with Sansa for being a Stark, neither did they want to align with Jon for being Ned Stark's son.... Until Lyanna Mormont very conveniently remembers that he's Ned Stark's son and uses that as a basis for declaring him King??? Then Sansa should have been crowned Queen because she won the battle of the bastards. Sansa didn't show up looking gorgeous in a battlefield. She showed up looking gorgeous with an army and saved a losing battle in a battlefield. By that logic, did the House of Mormont decide to depose Lyanna Mormont since she wasn't knee-deep in the mud, hacking at men with a sword she could barely lift? By that logic, they should rally to give the Lordship to Jorah then. Robert was named King because he won. All that valour and glory would have been for zilch if Rhaegar had killed him on the Trident. And Robert was a legitimate son. A Lord of his own rights to the Storm Lands. It simply isn't possible for Lords that, as @doram pointed out, depend on the laws of legitimacy and for their own power to go about crowning bastards who lose battles. The King in the North belongs to House Stark of Winterfell. It is Sansa's birthright as much as the Iron Throne that Dany's ancestor built can be considered her birthright. It has not now or ever been a democratically elected position. The Boltons self-styled themselves the Red Kings and have tried to win that title from the Starks by conquest over the years and failed. If the North had crowned Jon the President of the North, we won't be having this discussion. If Lyanna Mormont had not evoked Ned Stark's blood as a reason to crown Jon, that would be an entirely different thing. But they evoked Ned Stark's name to crown his bastard over his trueborn daughter. Now that Jon has bent the knee, he is now Warden of the North, another title that belonged to House Stark until the Boltons temporarily seized it. Book!Jon understood this when Stannis offered to legitimise him and give him Winterfell. Show!Jon just stole his sister's inheritance from under her nose and acted all humble and bashful about it. This is the opposite of the common argument that has been used to "discount" Dany's claim to the Iron Throne so it's so amusing to see it twisted around here. For one thing, Robert's claim to the Iron Throne even though it was through conquest was also through his Targaryen grand-mother yet the argument persists that Dany isn't the rightful Queen as the IT has been won by Conquest by House Baratheon. Well by that logic, therefore the Starks have no claim to Warden of the North because it was won by conquest by the Boltons. And either way, Sansa inherits it. Since Sansa is Ned Stark's last trueborn child (at the time) and the widow of the man who won the North by Conquest, she has a double claim to the title. I don't see what's so hard to understand here. And so what? The Northern Lords also don't know that Sansa "betrayed" Jon, so that wasn't a factor in their crowning Jon. As far as they knew, Sansa might even have told Jon that she was bringing in the Vale and he was the idiot who refused to wait for reinforcements to come. And enough with all this "Jon fought so bravely that the North bowed to him" argument. Robb Stark won every battle and still is called the King Who Lost the North. Since when did the North (in the show) care about Brave Losers? Look, this is so annoying because I don't even like Sansa. I think her keeping the intel about the Vale army was shady af and I wish the show had simply made her turn villain from her paranoia than have the two of them (Jon & Sansa) hand wave that with a hug and kiss. But that's not the point here. D & D did some seriously shady hand-waving to make Jon Snow King in the North despite her sitting right there next to him and that is not something I can pretend not to notice as much as I dislike her. I have no problem with Jon being crowned King in the North. But there was a logical way to do it - Robb's will, legitimising Jon and dis-inheriting Sansa - and not this stupid nonsense where a woman wins the Crown three times over (by conquest, by inheritance - twice) and is discredited because she doesn't have a penis.

Nothing sends my sides splitting with laughter harder than a misogynistic tirade couched as humour. I think this will be a more fitting end than the "Dany dies giving birth to Jon's pure-blood Targaryen son" speculation that seems to be so popular these days.

And so? The Northern Lords didn't know anything about whether Sansa told Jon or not that she was sending a raven for reinforcements. Jon certainly won't have told them. As far as they knew, they witnessed Vale army which came for Sansa Stark, niece of Lysa Tully and cousin of Robin Arryn, the Lord Paramount of the Vale --- win the battle of the bastards - not Jon Snow. Sansa won the North threefold - as the only known living trueborn heir to Robb Stark, the last King in the North; as the victor of the Battle of the Bastards that ousted Lord Bolton, the last Warden of the North and as the widow of Lord Bolton, the last Warden of the North. Instead in the most contrived circumstances possible - basically, Lyanna Mormont gave a rousing speech that didn't make any sense - Jon was crowned King. And what does he do? Does he tell the Lords, "No. This is not my birthright. My sister, Sansa is sitting right here." As he told Stannis at the Wall when Stannis offered him Winterfell? Instead he accepts it. I dare anyone to read my post history and think I'm a Sansa fan. That doesn't mean that I will ignore the fact that Sansa was cheated out of her victory and birth-right in season 6 to make room for Super-speshul Mary Sue Jon.

Thanks for pointing this out. I am no Sansa fan and I think her actions at BotB are very suspect ---- but it's canon that she's credited for the victory over Bolton. So why wasn't she considered Queen in the North by her own merit? Why did the Northern Lords only consider her this season as a reaction to Jon letting them down? Thanks for pointing this out. Jon is a Mary Sue, if we're going by the definition of this character as a "highly idealised perfect" character because yeah, you can claim he made a few mistakes, etc etc but what are the far reaching consequences of those mistakes, any way? At this moment, he's poised to become King of Westeros - a title he never asked for or fought for or wanted - which is textbook Mary Sue. That super-speshul person that gets everything that their rival fights for and never gets. He has the love of the most significant female character in the story, and everything that comes with her - her magic, her dragons and the loyalty of her armies. He has not one, but two magical bloodlines. Of all the 5 Stark children, Jon is the only one who still has his direwolf by his side. He will soon claim a fully-grown dragon that will just become loyal to him because of His Magical Blood. Dany had to lose her husband and child and take the chance of being burnt alive in a pyre to hatch the dragon eggs. Then she nursed the baby dragons, and suffered through their adolescent phase, and people still mutter that she wasn't a good mother because she didn't show enough "sadness" when Viserion died. But everyone expects Jon to just stretch out a hand to pet Rhaegal and be able to fly him. Yep, Jon Snow is as Mary Sue as they come --- but with one important exception as @doram pointed out. He's the male protagonist. Ergo, he cannot be a Mary Sue.

??? This is kind of scaring-ly brilliant.

Well, she did imply that Dany bearing a living child was something akin to pigs flying. Not bashing your theory or Jon's, for that matter. I kind of like the idea that rather than something elaborate, the "solution" to this was a simple case of misunderstanding or unreliable sources (or narrators as you described). But Mirri definitely wanted Dany to believe that she'd never have children again even if she wasn't blatantly lying about it.

Add to the list of things that made Littlefinger's execution & the entire Winterfell Stark Sister plot this season so unsatisfyingly fan-ficcy: Whatever happened to Stark way:

But to argue that it would cast no shadow over Sansa, or over the way Jon and the North regard her? That's not true to life or even true to the way this story is told - or at least, was being told. The running theme of this tale has always been "Actions Have Consequences". From Robb's decision to wed Jeyne/Talisa to Catelyn arresting Tyrion to Dany saving Mirri ad nauseum. But this action of Sansa has zero consequences on her. It has none on her personality. it has none on the way she's regarded. It might as well have never happened. Ramsay might as well have just been beheaded or hung from the neck for all the "point" his grotesque and monstrous death caused. It's almost as if that scene, like a lot of things to do with Sansa after the show started changing her book arc, was created purely for fan service without any tangible connection to the larger nature of the story, or even Sansa as a character.

This is the entire point of this Sansa/Arya arc. It's just a misdirect to make us think that one or both of the girls are evil. But PYSHCH! they're not.