He Did It All With A Knuckle
by DICK CHENEY
Game of Thrones
creators David Benioff & D.B. Weiss
HBO
There was a moment during Sunday's Thronesing when I was pretty sure Jon Snow was going to strike Sansa Stark down. She was talking at length, in front of a large crowd, about her plan to make child-aged heirs to fiefdoms homeless, and he let loose a "No!" deep within his caustic stomach. All the nearby lords were like, "Sansa, the fuck are you doing, girl? You have done exactly shit except watch a couple husbands die and now you think you're Disraeli?" Thrones is just fanfiction now.
They should honestly make Thrones silent at this point. Jamie Lannister can mime with his faux right hand if he can't sign. You see, the original Game of Thrones was actually about how various families operated when they pursued power but now it is about decimating a Big Bad, in this case a frozen army that is going to be awful susceptible to three enormous dragons. I mean, what can they really do against these beasts, hole up in a refrigerator like Indiana Jones?
Sure, Game of Thrones was always like a light, easily passed stool but now it gives me various headaches with the plot holes and the reinvention of various characters. Only one thing can never be retconned or re-envisioned, and that is how much of a useless mound Bran Stark is. Maybe I'm feeling particularly hostile because no one can ever bother to write dialogue or conflict for Daenerys Targaryen and her group of ne'er-do-wells looks to average a height of 4'11".
I think I was most angry when I saw Arya Stark destroy the Freys in one scene. How hard is it exactly to murder all of King's Landing given that? This mass poisoning was roundly unsatisfying, and the sexist way she spared the women like they were not culpable as well irked me, too. Thrones has a terrible time struggling with its innate sexism. Women are quick to anger and murder, men are all Father Brown. Even when you flip a stereotype on its head, it's still a fucking stereotype.
Speaking of Father Brown, Samwell Tarly living with his wife and child in the Citadel was such a letdown. I mean, would it have been that hard to give the maesters some secret power over their betters, for example a blood pressure test or access to unlimited antibiotics? Instead they are a shittier, primal version of doctors, having inherited only the egotism and propensity for note-taking.
Now that every single one of Cersei's children is dead, I was semi-interested in how she would appear altered as a character. Instead we are witnessing a quick rehabilitation of her as a powerful executive, only the point of all this is not exactly clear. She at least is a good performer – we feel how lame and pathetic the regular stars of Thrones are when a particularly charismatic and attention getting actor takes over the scene: the immensely talented Richard Dormer as Beric Dondarrion, or the disembodied hand of Ser Jorah Mormont.
Thinking too long about this stuff gives me a headache at the worst possible time, before Lynne and I curl up to a solid hour of the Starz series Power. It seems they have taken the criticisms of Thrones' constant nude scenes to heart: now we cannot even get so much as a bodice or some ample cleavage. What a world. To fill the gaps, I have composed this brief elegia to the Sansa Stark that was. Enjoy.
When we had to pass in a narrow space, doing the hard work of reassembling Winterfell, she contrived to bump me with a round hip. She looked bemused and tricky and smug, darting her blue and challenging glances. She finished a sandwich, licked her fingers, tried to give me a wink. But she couldn't close one eye without nearly closing the other. It made her look like a blind direwolf.
When she would come to show me where something went, she would manage to press the heat of a mellow breast against my arm. She built the big awareness of Sansa. The infrequent small talk — "Did you know that Brienne always smells like a hot dog that has been left out for a couple days?" — bore little relation to what was happening between us. Wasn't I supposed to be her brother?
Finally, she managed to trip and turn and be caught just so, gasping, a silky weight, breath warm, eyes knowing, lips gone soft and an inch away, and not enough air in the frigid room.
I straightened back up and gave her a little push. "Now, Sansa, we can't do this."
"Oh Jon," she said, "ethics and everything. The little sister. You talk so many bold games about knighting those traitors, it gets confusing for a girl. I guess you think it would be a lousy thing to come here to take care of me, and then take care of me too many ways? But there are all kinds of ways. How it is you should be so stuffy you make me seem sort of cheap and obvious?"
I said nothing, only thought of Sam giving it to his girlfriend in warmer climes.
"I'm getting mad to keep from crying," Sansa said, brushing her hair back from her face. "I mean you're so stuck on this role you have to play. Seven gods, I suppose I am the little sister, but I am also an adult, Jon. I told you before I've run into some doors and had my share of black eyes. My husbands are all dead now. I had a disaster of a marriage and a very fast annulment. But you have some kind of boy scout oath... Now I feel degraded, and... damn it, get out of here!"
I laughed and caught her. She leapt about, saying in effect that the precious moment had passed, and to the Narrow Sea with it, and we couldn't retrieve the situation, it was spoiled, etc etc. I stilled her mouth and each time she talked it was with a little less conviction, and finally she stood docile, trembling, taking huge noisy inhalations, her strong pale neck bent forward while, with clumsy fingers, I unlatched the little hook on the back of the potato sack she was wearing for some reason.
"This is n-n-n-nutty," she whispered. I told her that indeed it was. I could feel Littlefinger's eyes on us from the alcove above. Time moves slowly, then, as in an underwater world. She had hitched herself to rest upon me, so distributed that she seemed to have no weight at all. She had her dark head tucked under the angle of my jaw, her hands under me and hooked back over the tops of my shoulders, her deep breasts flattened against me, used loins resting astraddle my right thigh.
"Golly, golly, golly," she said in a sighing whisper. "Do you think that Jamie ever made Cersei this happy?" I told her I hoped that he had.
Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.
