CeeBeeGee

Might I suggest...A Song of Ice and Fire? I don't know, it has a nice ring to it, I think.

She was GREAT. One of the pleasures of this show is the amount of sheer talent on display. In just one scene you were rooting for her, and felt her tragedy at the end. No, his mother and sister are still at Hornhill.

Beautifully said. God, she's such a great treasure. I LOVE her friendship with Jaime. "FUCK loyalty!"

Totally agree.

The reason Joffrey (I believe it was he who ordered it) wanted them wiped out was because their existence proved that he and his siblings could not be Robert's children. All the bastards had dark hair ("the seed is strong") and Joffrey and his siblings were blonde. After Robert, the next in line was Stannis, not a bastard child.

The scene on the boat, when he was lying in bed and first addressed her as "my Queen" was hottttttttt.

Realistically someone was going to rebel against Aerys. Rhaegar and Lyanna were just the spark--Aerys was widely hated and feared for his sadism.

Right? It's distracting, that's all--they're gearing up for this nihilistic fight, it's distracting. Tell her when/if you both survive. I reallyreallyREALLY want either him, Tyrion or Arya wearing a face to take out Cersei. I am so stressed about this! I thought they dropped the ball last season--poor Viserion was killed right in front of her and they didn't show her mourning at all? That was a significant moment for her. (And me. I'm still so, so sad they a member of an endangered species was killed. And will now be weaponized against its mother.) Anyway, YES, Dany, you will be riding Drogon and fighting against your other baby. THIS MATTERS. Writers, take note. Meant to add--none of us are prepared. We are all so fucked for next week. This is 2011 Mark Reads Harry Potter realness. Remember when he read the GOF graveyard scene? "Cedric was a Hufflepuff!!!!!!" You are not prepared.

I know. It can feel so inauthentic. But I was DRILLED with "you cannot end a sentence or an independent clause with a preposition!" It hurts me NOT to--just my particular grammar tic 😉

If she does that is some shitty misogynistic writing. Dany has never been written like that.

FANTASTIC episode. Jaime knighting Brienne--epic. Loved how they did not shy away from Sansa v. Dany (that was a great conversation that went all over the place--loved their bonding and then Sansa all "we are not dropping this--we don't want to be ruled") and then Jon bringing up the news. (I thought they would wait until after the battle to discuss that.) Arya with Gendry was...unexpected but okay, whatever. I just loved all the moments. Lyanna with Jorah (sadly, I feel we may have seen the last of her--I just worry that she is angst-bait for the writer. Tiny Lady Mormont fighting the dead? She's a goner). Sansa with Theon. Missandei with Grey Worm. The conversation at the fireplace. This was a great episode.

[Davos] To whom do we have to bend the knee....[/Davos]

Or just let Gendry's hair grow out. He's a handsome man but that buzzcut makes him look like a convict. Randyll definitely did not want Dickon to do. That scene was tragic once Dickon insisted on standing next to his father. Such unnecessary death. But his father--even though he reached out for comfort at the last--was trying to dissuade him. I believe, even though I often hear the dragons referred to as he, that dragons are unisex. But I've said this before, there's no way that the last three surviving dragon eggs just happened to be gifted to Dany--surely there are more. Brienne needs to have large babies with JAMIE. I will fight you on this! 😉 But yes, Brienne (along with the remaining two dragons and Lady Mormont) are tops on my list of Must Not DIe. Please please please please please......I already cried all night over Viserion. Please no more.

I think you mean Glover. Lord Umber (*sob*) was the little lord who adorably tried so hard to address Sansa, Jon and Dany with the correct styles, who said he needed more horses and was dismissed to go back to Last Hearth (his keep) to bring his men and...well, we saw what happened to him at the end. We didn't see Lord Glover but Sansa got a note from him saying he would stay at home to fight and that he wished them good luck or some such bullshit.

I have wondered if Dany isn't meant to suggest Cleopatra who was quite intelligent (she spoke numerous languages and was the first Ptolemaic pharoah to speak Egyptian) and yet was the product of multiple generations of incest. Arya is either forgetting her (wonderful) interactions with Tywin Lannister (GOD, I loved their conversations) or she is paying Sansa a hell of a compliment. Sansa is smart--she was able to adjust to the realities and limitations of her hostage status very quickly after Ned's murder execution. Remember her manipulating Joffrey into wanting to be at the vanguard right before the Battle of Blackwater Bay? I think Arya and Gendry are cute as hell together. ("As you wish, milady..."--my heart squirmed and I am not a "shipper.") And yes, that definitely felt like flirting to me.

Oh my God, Ms. How horrifying. So glad you survived. Yes, I too have been a victim of sexual assault. Once when I was a child (as far as I remember, it only happened once but that one time is indelible) and again as an adult (I should say this was an attempt, I was able to fight him off). The second time I misremembered the assailant's appearance--I swore he was wearing a durag but the police showed me the security footage and he had a cap instead. Again, people often get details wrong when undergoing trauma. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. This is a cynical attempt to cast doubt on these survivors. And why? As someone above said, this is a POP STAR. Look, I loved him too. I LOVED Off the Wall, even more than Thriller. He was a part of my adolescence. But it's impossible to doubt when this many accusers have come forward, all with the same haunted look. (For the record, I believed he was guilty with the first accuser. Partly because of my past, partly because he settled. Who settles when you're accused of child molestation?)

Newsflash: Victims of longterm sexual abuse that happened 25+ during their childhood years ago sometimes misremember details. SHOCKING.

That's...really not at all what I said, or meant. I didn't address the "social or sexual revolution" at all.* And specifically what I said about MJ (the topic) was this: IOW, I certainly don't think, nor did I say, that Michael's actions were caused by what was around him, but rather that he could take advantage of the laissez-faire attitude toward sex with children by explaining it away. In his case he made constant protestation of "it's all love, it's all beautiful." Roman Polanski kept dismissing concerns about his rape of the thirteen year old by saying disdainfully how prudish we Americans were. Same dismissal, same attempts at normalization. And there were hordes of people who agreed with them, who did not see anything wrong with MJ's actions towards the boys in his household. This is partly why I actually have more sympathy with the mothers. I really think they were gaslighted by all the people in MJ's orbit, by his star power, by all those people who handwaved away their concerns, said he was just a big child, it was innocent, it was all innocent. It doesn't excuse why they ultimately didn't listen to their own instincts--I keep thinking about James's mom noticing how the suites kept getting farther and farther away, and Wade's mom finally (only not really) putting her foot down and defying MJ, they must absolutely hated themselves, remembering that, why didn't I listen to myself and follow through?--but I don't think they're monsters. NOBODY was pointing out the weirdness. NOBODY. MJ was enabled not just by his entourage but by the entire entertainment industry, including the media. Jordyn must've had incredible courage to be the first one to say it out loud. *As a quick aside, the obsession with underage girls in the '70s--specifically men normalizing the sexualization of underage girls--IMO had much less to do with the sexual revolution (which was healthy and normal) and more to do with a reaction to the women's movement. Women wants rights and power, men feel threatened so they start turning to younger and younger girls. (You can see this nowadays--who's the guy who always has much younger girlfriends? The one who wants to be in control, and feels he can't hack it with women his own age.) Sure, there's some overlap which is why I don't exactly know how to feel about the young groupies who had sex with Bowie et al. and do not feel they were victims. But I think the vast majority of this thing was a reaction to women's liberation. Anyway, this is off-topic so I won't say more.

I have watched the documentary several times now. I was literally shaking afterward--literally shaking. I haven't believed MJ since the '93 allegations and frankly I didn't give a shit when he died. To me, after '93 he was someone who had gotten away with child molestation. But I had no--NO--idea it was that bad, that...appalling. I guess I thought it was touching, inappropriate boundary-crossing, not...that. The part where Wade described--the graphic part about his being seven, and how big MJ was--this quite literally made me vomit. I was walking to the train and that flashed into my head and I started gagging and ended up vomiting onto the sidewalk. That poor baby--Wade was just a baby. He was seven. James was ten. I am so, so angry on their behalf. I want to dig up Michael Jackson's filthy pedophile corpse and burn the bones and spit on the ashes. This bothers me nearly as much as the sexual abuse--the casual abandonment. How terribly hurt both of them must have felt, wondering if they'd said or done the wrong thing, crying on the couch as James talked about. It's breathtakingly cruel. Like everyone else said, I just want to wrap my arms around them and shower them with unconditional support and friendship. Maybe some ice cream sundaes and teddy bears. Wade and James--you did not deserve this. You are good people. You were good sons, you are good fathers. You did not deserve this. I think most Americans pay lip service to being against sex abuse but as soon as it's one of their heroes, the knives come out. Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby, MJ, James Barbour... Oh my God, I HATED that woman. I well remember her and her tittering, smirky obvious attempt to play to the audience. I fucking HATED her. You know she was hoping to parlay the whole experience into a book or something. Overnight? MJ still has his fans but the general public has been giving him the side-eye for a long time. Anyone who's been putting in time and money to impersonate MJ is a fool. He was! Go see him in The Wiz, he was a beautiful man before all the surgeries. Beautiful nose and smile. Before he turned into a living portrait of Dorian Gray. This is good to hear. I've been going back and forth about this with a friend of mine, and I texted him: Another thing worth mentioning is that when Thriller came out and before (whenever the grooming and abuse started), we were just coming out of the '70s. And let me tell you, that era was one in which the grownups of the US collectively lost their minds. Children--girls, really--were sexualized to a truly insane degree. Read about Brooke Shields's childhood and early career. Nearly all of her earliest roles were ones where she, a child, was playing a prostitute or simulating sex or even just running around naked, as she did in the screwball comedy Just You and Me, Kid. It's amazing she turned out as normal as she did. Of course there's some famous Roman Polanski case, and he had and has many defenders. Oh, and for another example, have some nightmare fuel: Love's also had a creepy print ad where a little girl was made up to look like a full-blown woman, again with the tagline about how innocence was soooooo sexy. GROSS. Anyway, I wonder if on some level MJ wasn't trying to take advantage of that lack of boundaries.

I was talking about this yesterday with a parent (I am a soccer coach). I adore FS but I can get why the girls go for hockey, and honestly I applaud them. When I grew up no girls played ice hockey. I was part of the first generation of girls to play soccer. I would love for girls to go for both and I desperately want the US to regain its dominance in FS but it's great that we're showing strength in this area as well.

Yes, both the tone of Peter's voice and the fact that he was drinking tipped me off. Didn't George's son Steve write a book claiming his dad killed the Black Dahlia? And I believe he was a cop.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK That last scene was HORRIFYING. Oh my Lord, the actor playing Hodel is creeping me the fuck out. And I had a feeling that he was her father. But then I teethed on the Flowers in the Attic series.

As confused as I am, I am very much enjoying this. But Ivanovich is not a first name. In Russian nomenclature, it is a middle name, the patronymic--Russian middle names always take the father's first name and add as a suffix -ovich or -ovna, meaning son of or daughter of.

Fully co-sign. It's one reason I can't get into ice dancing. I haaaaaate the manufactured drama. I never liked V&M for that reason. I don't care about your angst. I love a good performance but the "face clutching," as you say, is just obnoxious. I want athleticism, precision, difficulty, choreography.

I posted this way back in the thread--in the past week I have been revisiting this case and it would be a natural choice. It was a big, big story back when it first broke in '89. The seemingly perfect couple mugged and shot in their car in the Mission Hill (considered dangerous for white people) neighborhood just after they left their Lamaze class. Wife dies that night, infant is delivered by C-section prematurely, dies days later. Husband gives a detailed description of a black assailant--Mission Hill is absolutely upended as the cops go crazy trying to find the murderer. The cops eventually identify a likely suspect, a career criminal who seemed to fit the profile and whose nephew claimed had bragged about the shootings. On its own the story would've been big, but Rescue 911 was riding with one of the ambulances that night and got footage of their extrication from the car. And then the husband's younger brother is racked with guilt and comes forward as the grand jury is about to indict the suspect. The night of the shootings he'd had a pre-arranged agreement with his brother to meet in the mIssion Hill neighborhood at a certain time, brother would give him a bag, and he was to get rid of it. Younger brother ends up throwing the bag in the river--but not before seeing what was inside. Among other things, a gun and personal jewelry of the wife, including her very expensive engagement ring, all of which was reported stolen by the "mugger." Younger brother had the intelligence to keep the ring, which serves as proof for his story. The day after younger brother goes to the DA, husband jumps into the Mystic River. So the husband did it, for the insurance money mainly. The PTB were fooled for a time because husband's injuries were so bad (he accidentally shot himself much worse than he intended to) but apparently the hospital staff had fingered him because his affect was so creepy and "off," afterward. They made a very good TV movie of it but a multi-episode series could really explore the story. Domestic abuse, systemic racism, class issues (husband was obsessed with the couple's rising yuppie status)--there's a lot to unpack here.