MoldySpiceGirl

I was thinking that, too. My town in Nebraska was hit by a pair of F5s, and they literally twisted up huge grain silos made of solid metal into deformed, exploded pretzels. Thinking that having a steel room full of a foos-ball table and mouse poop will somehow protect her from a twister is just as delusional as thinking that mouse poop isn't in their creepy salsa.

So, that was a thing. There's just a whole lot to process. Though, in response to the Hvitserk thing -- Ivar did, essentially, kill him ultimately. His acceptance and death led to Hvitserk ceasing to be Hvitserk. (There is no Zuul, only Athelstan.) Gah. I'm gonna need a moment.

Just a few thoughts while livewatching; * Listen. Finehair might be an unmitigable bastard, but there's no denying it: he's poetry on the battlefield. Violent poetry written by an angry dude in a basement, maybe, but still poetry. * I may have just physically cheered when Hvitserk & Co jumped up out of their ground burrows like the world's blondest trap spiders. Just saying. * Why do I get the feeling that the Ubbe-following "where's this gold from" dude is just foreshadowing for, oh, say, the next thousand or so years of history? We have learned nothing. * So Alfie gets stabbed and sees Jesus. I suppose he doesn't have all that much life to flash in front of his eyes, but... * That poetry thing? The scene with Halfdan and the neck dude is...fitting. I hope Peter Franzen has more work than he can ever reasonably take on for as long as he wants it, forever. *LAST SCENE OMG OMG OMG OMG. So I'm literally sitting here cheering. Scared the crap out of the dog. Husband thinks I may be injured. Came to check. Is also cheering, too. I feel a little bad for spoiling him. But OMG OMG OMG.

I'm fairly certain that all the "I feel a presence" stuff was 100% to psyche King Crazypants out. To sow just enough doubt to be an annoying little fly in his ear for the rest of the season. It's the kind of shenanigans Olaf was good at. Jovial screwing-with-your-mind-ness.

Of course they don't want to change. It's a mental illness, not a preference for tea. The brain of a hoarder is telling them that they're just fine. That it's not that bad. Or if they know it's that bad, that they have reasons for it all, and once imaginary conditions are met, they'll take care of it. (Some of those can be physical triggers, like once I get my garbage service turned back on or unarticulated other triggers, like when I'm safe again.) Clearly, those conditions can never BE met, so they're stuck in a horrible feedback loop where they either don't know or know and can't do anything about it. It's dismissive to say they "simply don't want to change", because there's nothing simple about it.

Warning: Sob Story Forthcoming. My first husband left me for a girl on the internet, whom, incidentally, I introduced him to. Moreover, he said nothing. No letter, no call, no email. He went to see a sick grandfather, and just never came home. I had to find out he wasn't dead from her blog about their new and perfect relationship. I know. Soooo....I'm thinking the letters weren't all that horrible, big-picture. At least there was some closure this way. I think it's far-fetched that there was no warning and that he's just going to play Family with Izzy, but it's not really out of the realm of possibility. Might just be that I'm jaded, though. 😄

I think she's in the best position to do so. She bought her house in Flagstaff instead of just renting, if I remember correctly. So if they all vote to make the Castle Plyg, she can just be all THX BUT NOPE and stay right where she is with no real financial impact. I'm wondering if that wasn't the actual purpose of Robyn's mini-rant about how everyone should be able to leave if they want to. (And why she's not opposed to that, considering that's one less wife to plow over on her way to Only Wife status.) Stir that pot; plant some seeds.

I feel like that might have been the moment where Ivar realized that, out of all the people he knows now, he's not even in the All Star Crazy Top Ten. Maybe not even in the team photo at this point. Also, I totally called it with Gunnhild. CALLED IT. I'm thinking the sisterwife's gonna end up with a not-so-happy ending, probably soon. Spidey sense is totally going off for !Athelstan. Not sure if Hirst is setting him up as a god-wanderer or if he's just some schmo with the Syph who can't tell the stories he's heard from reality at this point. I mean, it's *Hirst*. It could go either way.

Thoughts: Gunhild isn't stupid. I think she knows this is a temporary bangfest for Bjorn, and if she said her or me, that thirsty girl would be hanging around forever, blaming the wife for keeping her from her OTP. Inviting her in, making it her choice, and wifing her takes away all the illicit joy in the thing, and once reality sets in and Bjorn is thwapped with the disillusioned mistress-turned-leg-anchor, either he'll be the one to drop her like a hot snotrocket, or she'll get tired of not being the coveted mistress and go away. Gunhild is freeing her from her servitude, so she can leave and not be hunted back down as property that way, too. Gunhild is smart. Way smarter than her husband. I'm worried for Ubbe & co.. If for no other reason than the gaspingly! dramatic! camera angle! when Flatnose pretty much Scooby-Doo-Villained the whole why did you come here? line. I'm surprised Hirst didn't have him twirl his mustache in two fingers. The whole Lagertha/Ragnar breakup scene was allusional, I think, too. He had a choice then: mama (his heart) or papa (the head), and picked Lagertha. Put in that situation again, he leaned hard on the loyalty to his mother (and torturing her killer) over his father's lineage (his half-brothers). He picked her again. Vengeance vs. family loyalty. Granted, MadEye's probably going to die in a forest, either from exposure or the DTs, but Bjorn didn't do it directly. I just wonder if it's going to bite him in that furry behind the way it did when he let the traitors go. Also, gotta say, I kind of dug his monologue. Super melodramatic, there, Bjornie, but still...kinda dug it.

DOH. I did mean Iceland. Thanks for the catch.

To me, it felt sort of like a visual shedding of identities and roles. First, shedding the physical body, then her political power, then her shieldmaiden self, until finally, she was the first Lagertha, wife of a farmer. It's that Lagertha that settled next to Ragnar and was swallowed by the sea.

Stylistically speaking, her story arc was done. She got her place in history, retired to the country, and watched way too many people die. She was tired, and she was done. I kind of imagine her holding up a middle finger, yelling FTS, I'M OUT, LOSERS. I'm kind of wondering what they'll do with fourteen more hours of screen-time, though. Safe bets: Bjorn being broody and cheat-y, the women having ALL the strength, politics making dudes hack-and-slashy, and Ivar being nutbars cuckoopants all over the continent. I'll also be miffed if we don't get back to Greenland, even if it's just to find Floki's body. Dude was a whackjob, but he was a lovable whackaloon, and that ending for him was...regrettable.

Yeah, but if you want to go that route, then you could say it's Ragnar's fault for ditching Lagertha for Asslog to begin with. If he hadn't, there wouldn't have been an Ivar to mess up Hvitserk. Playing the unintended consequences game is kind of a fool's errand. About the song/possible timejump: Lagertha was famous, even in her day. It wouldn't have been impossible for there to be songs about her. And from what I've heard of traditional scandinavian/icelandic music, a LOT sounds sort of dirgey and funereal. (Look up "Trollbundin" on youtube -- and that's based on a sheep-calling song, from what I understand, but sounds super lament-y.) I think it's just all wrapped up in Hirst's focus on fate. Ubbe & co. are listening to a singer yodeling about Lagertha while Lagertha's hallucinating the Seer, who told L about her own fate AND prodded Mad Eye Moody to remember his own fate even if he didn't like it. Hirst probably found the Lagertha song and worked it in to make the whole thing all circular and predestined, IMHO.

See, and I immediately went there with Firefly. "Wearing our skin as a suit" is totally a Reaver move.

The first rule of Hoard Club is we don't talk about Hoard Club.

As excited as I am to see Paxton, I'm baffled at A&E's choice to make a whopping four episodes for a full season. Are we running out of hoarders to film or something?

Yeah, it happens. Especially in old houses. Some tree saplings send up what look like vines that will find any window or crack in the foundation or, in a friend of mine's case, the hole left when they took cable TV out, and will grow right inside. And they literally grow like a foot a day sometimes. It doesn't surprise me they were in Linda's place, what with the cracks and all that tasty tasty nitrogen in the carpet. (gack.)

Watching this episode made my skin crawl and my blood boil. Animal cruelty's a crime; she's a repeat offender. Why aren't they tossing this nasty, demented, gaslighting abuser in the klink for that, at least? And how much are they paying the 800JUNK guys? I can't imagine it's enough.