Hodor?

Now that the mystery of Hodor's limited vocabulary has been solved, there's much depend about his free will. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go watched GoT or pick another entry because Holy SPOILERS Batman!

In Days of Future Past, they had to send Wolverine's mind back in time to his old body because he was the only one who could handle the mental trauma. I think something similar happened to Wylis/Hodor. When Bram warged into past Hodor to get present Hodor moving, it created a strange time loop Wylis's mind wasn't meant to endure. It broke him.

His fundamental personality of being warm and kind remained and he could make very small decisions but he couldn't calculate. When he was being tormented by the Night's Watch Wildling Party, he couldn't think enough to strike back. He knew to run away but not to fight back.

He knows who treats him well and, therefore, who he cares about. He wanted to protect Bram so he chose to hold the door. Had Bram not made Hodor move, Hodor would have likely been wight chow. Rather than run scared (a valid option), Hodor chose to stay and protect his friend.

The actor who played Hodor said that aside from the initial push, everything else was Hodor's choice. You can even see it in his eyes. I firmly believe that when the end came, Hodor made the difficult and brave choice to die for his friends. Now we just have to find out whether the writers will torment us by making him a wight or not.

Does GoT need to G-O for What Happened to Sansa?

The internet is abuzz with the recent episode of Game of Thrones. Much like everyone else, I have my own opinion on the matter

SPOILER ALERT

I completely agree that the writers of this show use rape as a plot device and it needs to stop. It perpetuates rape culture and normalizes the behavior to the general audience. I’ve considered more than once walking away from the show because of it. A variety of fans, bloggers, and the like have publically walked away from the show because of Sansa’s rape at the hands of Ramsey. I completely respect and support their decision.

That said, the writers had to do some major character condensation to keep the storylines flowing. There are already so many side narratives and characters that they don’t all fit in one episode anymore. According to multiple sources, Jeyne Poole (the condensed character) gets it much worse in the book than Sansa did on the show.

The Washington Post has an excellent piece that says the show fully acknowledged this was a rape and did as tasteful a job presenting it as possible. We know Ramsey is a monster and knew he’d torment his bride. I respect the show for not victimizing the character with how the scene was treated.

The show is on thin ice with me personally but this is not what will break it. The writers were trying to do as accurate a job as possible while condensing characters. That is not easy.

If we’re going to attack anyone about this incident, let’s go after Martin for creating such a monstrous character. I’ve read enough of the books to suspect that Martin writes with the male gaze even when it’s a female point of view character.

If we’re really going to attack the writers, let’s attack them for making all of the kidnapping slavers black. We finally get more than a few token characters of color and they’re all bad guys? Really GoT? Really?