Ultimate Game of Thrones F*ck, Marry, Kill

Guys, I'm sad.

Game of Thrones is over until the final season airs in 2019, and I am v depressed about it. As a way to deal with the withdrawals, I've created the ULTIMATE Game of Thrones F*ck, Marry, Kill. You know the rules. You win, or you die. 

*BEFORE YOU CONTINUE: This may be mildly spoily for those who have not caught all the way up.  

Let's start with the mens. 

1. FMK: Bastards

Gendry

Ramsay Bolton

Jon Snow (?!)



2. FMK: Eunuchs

Grey Worm

Theon Greyjoy

Lord Varys


3. FMK: Dead Starks

Ned Stark

Robb Stark

Benjen Stark


4. FMK: Sociopaths

Joffrey Baratheon

Ramsay Bolton

Petyr Baelish


5. FMK: Dany's Lovers

Khal Drogo

Daario Naharis

Jon Snow


6. FMK: Lannisters

Jaime Lannister

Tyrion Lannister

Lancel Lannister




7. FMK: Sidekicks

Bronn of Blackwater

Samwell Tarly

Podrick Payne


Now for the ladies....


1. FMK: HBICs

Cersei Lannister

Sansa Stark

Daenerys Targaryen


2. FMK+ Duel! : Badass Warrior Chicks

Brienne of Tarth

Arya Stark

Meera Reed

Yara Greyjoy


3. Redheads

Melisandre

Ygritte

Sansa Stark


4. Fashion Icons

Daenerys Targaryen

Margaery Tyrell

Missandei


5. Wildlings

Ygritte

Gilly

Osha


6. Whores

Ros

Shae

Doreah


7. The Sand Snakes


JK nobody cares. 



8. Annoying Minor Characters No One Was Sad to See Go

Myranda

The Waif

Selyse Baratheon




I hope you and your friends had fun! 

And now our watch begins....

Two college dudes find themselves in a pickle when one of them steals a bust of Ayn Rand

OPEN SCENE. Ryan, a college sophomore, darts nervously around the courtyard. He sits down on a bench with his head in his hands for a moment and fishes his iPhone out of his pocket. Dials Brody. 

BRO: Sup.

RY: Dude I need your help.

BRO: I didn’t do the bio homework either.

RY: Dude fuck bio I did something bad.

BRO: ...Okay?

RY: I stole Ayn Rand.

BRO: Um...what?

RY: You know the bust of that ogre-looking broad on the second-floor reading nook in the library?

BRO: Yes...

RY: I took it.

BRO: Are you out of your goddamn mind?

RY: I think so dude I don’t even know.

BRO: How did that even...dude why?

RY: I...I don’t know.

BROL Isn’t that thing like bolted to the ground?

RY: I thought so but I touched it and it moved so I just...picked it up.

BRO: Wait, so you were fondling Ayn Rand in the library and decided to just...

RY: I wasn’t fondling her I was—

BRO: Ayn Rand isn’t even hot dude.

RY: I know but—

BRO: Atlas Shrugged wasn’t even good.

RY: I didn’t even read—

BRO: It was weird.

RY: Dammit dude focus. I don’t know what to do with it now.

BRO: Where is she now?

RY: In my bag.

BRO: Dude that thing is huge, you just stashed it in your knapsack?

RY: It’s not a knapsack it’s a messenger bag and yes.

BRO: Does it even fit?

RY: The top of her head is sticking out.

BRO: You’re fucking stupid dude.

RY: You’re fucking stupid dude, help me get rid of it.

BRO: Just go put it back.

RY: I can’t just put it back, now they know it’s gone and they’ll be watching.

BRO: So you’re just gonna keep Ayn Rand in your dorm?

RY: No help me bury it.

BRO: I’m not helping you bury Ayn Rand dude.

*Later that night, while burying Ayn Rand behind the gym. 

BRO: I feel like stealing Ayn Rand is something the actual Ayn Rand would totally not be in favor of.

RY: Shut the fuck up man.

BRO: I’m just saying, it’s kind of ironic.

*Ryan and Brody pat down the last of the dirt and admire their patchy job

BRO: …I wonder how she would feel about being buried twice.

RY: Ayn Rand’s not dead dude.

BRO: She’s super dead dude.

RY: No man she’s like my grandpa’s age.

*Pull out cell phones and do a quick Google

RY: 1982. Super dead. My bad.

*Ryan and Brody head back toward their dorm, glancing nervously behind them.

RY: This is so fucked up dude.

BRO: Everyone’s gotta maintain their weird homeostasis dude. Some people keep wolverines tied to a post in their backyard.

RY: Some dudes collect woodland faeries.  Not fairies, faeries. Like with an “ae.”

BRO: And you’re a klepto with an Ayn Rand fetish.

RY: You’re dead to me.  

  

BRO: I think there’s a kappa that kind of looks like Ayn Rand, I’ll hook you up.

RY: All the kappas look like Ayn Rand dude.

BRO: Maybe we should bury them too.

END SCENE.

Everywhere You Look

I'm reluctant to write this. The whole time I've been formulating it in my head, I've been sparring with myself. Pick your battles, Brett. It's just a TV show. Don't be annoying. 

BUT I HAVE TO. It's just who I am. And annoying is part of the package. 

I just finished watching Season 2 of "Fuller House" during my post-finals crash. This show has gotten a lot of flack, and it's easy to see why. It is a truly terrible show. The acting is dreadful, the storylines are totally implausible, Carly Rae Jepsen's squeaky version of the theme song sucks. And the writers seemed to do nothing but swap some genders, upcycle some old jokes, and ride the wave of 90's girl nostalgia to the top. 

I personally love it though. It's cheesy, cheeky, and delightfully meta; at least once per episode the show pokes fun at itself. Precocious and hilarious 8-year-old Max has singlehandedly replenished my supply of one-liners. It might be tempting for the newest gen of moms to plop down with our kids down in front of the show with the same indiscretion that our moms let us watch "Full House" after school in the 90s. HOWEVER, the reboot of "Full House" is not a show for kids, especially young girls. And not because of the tongue-in-cheek sex jokes, which I personally am 100% here for. It's because "Fuller House" shows us just how far women's roles in TV have NOT come in the past 20 years. Let me explain.

Season 2 starts with 38-soon-to-be-39-but-doesn't-look-a-day-over-25-year-old DJ trying to choose between two sweet, adorable men who are crazy about her for seemingly no other reason than that she's a cute, perky vet who wakes up with perfectly tousled hair and a statement necklace. DJ has spent THREE WHOLE MONTHS "finding herself," and is ready to pick a man to live happily ever after with. Not so fast. Because it's only Episode 1 of Season 2. She finds out that over the summer while she was working on herself, they both went out and got girlfriends. Which is a perfectly normal thing to do. DJ is distraught. She runs into the arms of her best friend Kimmy Gibbler and exclaims, "I just want a boyfriend!"

Now let's put this into perspective. Danny, DJ's dad and counterpart in the OG "Full House," Had THREE girlfriends throughout the whole EIGHT seasons of the show, the first of which he didn't even meet until Season 5. Danny didn't need to date. He had his hands full with three daughters, a house, and his crazy houseguests. He was able to find fulfillment in other ways---cleaning, his career, hugging, and most of all, his family. 

But DJ, being a lot of things her father wasn't but most noticeably female, simply doesn't feel "fulfilled" until she has a guy. And no one tries to talk her out of it. Her sister, Stephanie, immediately takes her out to meet more guys. And let's remember, DJ's husband has been dead for no more than two years, considering her youngest is barely learning to walk. Everyone heals on their own timeline, but girl really?

The other female protagonists aren't granted a much better deal. In Season 1, Kimmy was in the process of divorcing her scumbag (but totally dreamy) Latin husband Fernando after he was unfaithful to her their entire marriage. One would hope that Kimmy would embark on a journey of self-discovery and be the awesome, loud, kind of slutty divorcee of the group, but NOT SO FAST. Fernando apologizes. So naturally Kimmy takes him back, and in Season 2 they are once again engaged. And she is not awesome, just spectacularly annoying.

To be fair, Fernando really seems like a changed man. He adores Kimmy, and as far as we know has not taken any more paramours. However, the same situation seems to be playing out for Kimmy's 13-year-old daughter, Ramona. Ramona's first kiss is with a miniature smarmy douchenozzle named Popko, whom she doesn't even like. When she starts to catch feelings for Popko after their kiss, she finds out he has a girlfriend, and he is a complete asshole to her about it. She has a 0.2-episode recovery time, which is great. But then Popko breaks up with his girlfriend and tries to get with Ramona. She rightfully rejects him, and then in true fuccboi fashion, he gets butthurt and posts an embarrassing video of her online. DJ's son Jackson gets him back for her, and the whole thing resolves by the end of the episode.

 A few eps later, it's New Years and Popko wants Ramona to be his New Year's kiss. She says no. So he apologizes for the video. That seems to do the trick. She grabs his stupid douchey face and kisses him. The audience track goes "WHOOOOOO" when it really should be going "EEEEEWWWW." This isn't sexy. It's a 13-year-old girl already getting manipulated by men who think they can just say "sorry," and whether or not they actually mean it, they can still get what they want. 

Girls, women, boys, men, young and old, need to know this: people do not change so easily. 

I actually had hope for Stephanie. She has grown up to be a badass globe-trotting rockstar/DJ who plays at Coachella and has a string of foreign boyfriends. But that couldn't possibly make her happy. No, her real happiness is in co-parenting her nephews, because what woman could possibly find happiness in a successful career, music, meeting cool people, and traveling? It's really raising kids that makes it all worth it. Well, we find out Stephanie can't have her own kids. She seems to be content with helping DJ raise her kids (who seem to be raising themselves while DJ chases tail), until aunt Becky adopts a kid. Aaaah Becky, you had to go f**k things up. Becky, who is also unfulfilled by a wildly successful career, being adored by millions, and reverse-aging like Benjamin Button, decides to adopt a baby. In a huge plug for adoption, Stephanie suggests to her boyfriend of literally four months that adoption is still an option for them, even if she can't have kids. YAY STEPHANIE! She still has a chance at what is apparently the only meaningful life for women! 

With all that ^ being said, I should also say that I do not believe that being a wife and mother is any less noble than being any other kind of thing. It is one of the most important and rewarding roles a woman can take on. But it's not the only role that can make a woman happy. "Fuller House" not only suggests that it is, but asserts that it is. And I get it. I get what kind of show this is. It's a stupid sitcom. It's probably mostly 20-and 30-whatever-year-old women watching it anyway. But we need to be aware of the messages that not just our girls are getting, but that we are getting as well. We are all hopefully aware that we can be multidimensional beings; we can be real, discrete people outside of being someone's wife or someone's girlfriend or someone's mom. TV just doesn't know that yet. They don't know us like they should. 

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If you're cool, wear a sweater

Cocaine Chic.

It's what I branded the cool kids to see if it would stick. 

To say someone is cocaine chic doesn't necessarily mean that person actually does drugs, although it may hint at some hedonistic proclivities. Rather, it refers to a certain aesthetic you would recognize instantly. And I call it an aesthetic because it is--literally--an artistic movement. 

Cocaine chic is about looking affluent, but totally disheveled. Effortless, but frantic. Eager to demonstrate how few f*cks are given. And of course, desperate to distinguish themselves, to find something "unique" to make part of their brand.

Very Unique.

I was at Matoska Trading Post sniffing loose-leaf and sweet grass when the person I was there with came to show me a buffalo horn he was considering getting as a gift for his friend. I noted that it would be a "very unique" gift. A moment of silence passed, then he began to speak. 
"Unique is an absolute," I interjected. "I know." 
While it's true that something can't be "very" unique, I still like to use the qualified version ironically. It's like a private, pretentious little joke with myself. 

In the quest to find something "very unique," it seems that the cool kids have collapsed into the same cultural chimera: think Winona Ryder 90's-era nihilist grunge, the slow-burning early-2010's hipster thing that refuses to quit, and a bit of Holly Golightly-esque materialism and crippling neurosis. 

At least, as far as I can get a reading on them. I've always been somewhere between nonthreatening and anonymous, someone whose presence is tolerated but not sought after, which you would think would make me a great student of coolness. However, cool kids always seem to keep you at an arm's length. In the few instances I have been on rides with a cool kid, I've felt vaguely like a Sal Paradise who has just gotten in the car with a Dean Moriarty. They might be a lunatic, dead inside, or a magnificent, colorful hero. And those things certainly aren't mutually exclusive. 


On Fleek.

In 2010, during one of the first conversations I ever had with Mike, I had cupcake frosting smeared on the front of my dress and tied my sweater around my waist, backwards like an apron, to cover it. I was not cool. I had a Taylor Swift poster in my dorm room and wore American Eagle camis. I listened to Paul Simon and the Twilight soundtracks. 

Mike was cool. He wore $50 t-shirts, desert boots, and rings. He listened to DJ remixes of other DJ remixes of obscure electronic indie songs. He had cool hair, a cool girlfriend, and a cool car. He had opinions, but did not share them, which back then was the hallmark of cool. 

I honestly had no idea why he wanted to hang out with me, but I hopped in shotgun and went for a ride with a cool kid. The next couple of years there were stops at lomography stores and bonsai gardens and organic markets and trendy coffee shops with only three orderable items. There were links to cool songs and a mix CD or two. There was one horrible Guatemalan patchwork jacket I test-drove way too seriously on my own quest for uniqueness. 

And then I had an original thought: what if hanging out with me is so NOT cool that it's cool? What if I'm part of the brand? What if I'm just the key to unlock the highest hipster badge available? 

I don't know. I don't care. I try not to think about what I mean to them. When it comes to cool kids, you treat them how you would treat anyone else. You enjoy them, love them, seek to understand them, show yourself to them. After all, despite their best efforts, they're just human. 

If you feel jealous of someone cooler than you....

It helps to imagine the conversations they have with the photographer before they take those awesome Instagram photos. "Get one of me. Long ways. Okay take another one. Make sure you get my shoes. Take another one. Okay now one looking away from the camera. Take a couple more." 


Epilogue: "Chill" as an adjective

I should note, there is an entire subgroup of cool kids, the "chill" kids, who are the ultimate pedigree of human. "Chill," which at some point became an adjective, refers to a personality trait, whereas "cool" is more of a cultural savvy. Chill kids, with their constrained emotional spectrum and indifference toward the actions and opinions of others, are extremely likable social chameleons. They can adapt their interests and personalities to any group they happen to be in. It's a remarkable thing to see. 

A modern millennial couple discovers they're running out of things to talk about

OPEN SCENE. It is a late Sunday morning in early October. Brunch rush is in a full swing at a trendy, steampunk-themed restaurant in Los Angeles. Nikolai and Suzette are seated in the outdoor patio area in the far corner, closest to the sidewalk.  

Nikolai, 30, is unbrushed and unshaven. He can't be bothered to wear real pants on weekends, so he is wearing basketball shorts and a plain white tee shirt. Suzette, also 30, is wearing overalls and Birkenstocks. Nikolai's oversized cardigan is draped over the back of her chair. She put it on this morning when it was chilly, but they are seated in the sun and it has since gotten warm out. They have finished eating and are slowly working on their lukewarm coffee. 

SUZ: I forgot to tell you, we're going to Angela's next Friday.

NIK: Who's "we?"

SUZ: You and me. 

NIK: I can make my own decision about whether to go to Angela's, thank you.

SUZ: Nope. You forfeited that right when you married me.

NIK: Excuse me, I'm an independent being. 

SUZ: Your MOM'S an independent being.

NIK: That she is. She's also wondering why you haven't called her lately.

SUZ: Nice try. If I haven't talked to her, then you DEFINITELY haven't talked to her.

NIK: I was hoping you could talk to her for both of us. 

SUZ: I have nothing to talk about with your mother.

NIK: You don't need to have anything to talk about with my mother. You listen to her gossip about her friends for a few minutes, and then when she suggests a weekend to come visit us, you make up somewhere we have to be. 

SUZ: Savage.

A few moments of silence pass. 

SUZ: Callie and Jason are getting divorced.

NIK: I know. We talked about it yesterday.

SUZ: Really? I thought I told Sarah.

NIK: Nope. Do you often get me and Sarah confused?

SUZ: Sometimes.

NIK: Do you wish I was Sarah?

SUZ: Yes, I pretend you're Sarah when we f--

WAITRESS: How's everything going over here? 

BOTH: Great, thanks.

The ponytailed waitress disappears into the muss. 

SUZ: She hates her job.

NIK: Yup. 

A few more moments pass. Suzette's mind starts to wander. 

NIK: Christ, we need to have kids so we have something to talk about. 

SUZ: No kids.

NIK: Why not kids?

SUZ: My body, my decisions. 

NIK: Nope. You forfeited that right when you married me. 

SUZ: I don't think that's how this works.

NIK: How does this work?

SUZ: We live together and I put your name on my tax returns. And sometimes I use your razor.

NIK: That can't be sanitary.

SUZ: We do less sanitary things.

NIK: Touche. 

A few more moments pass. An old-fashioned car drives by, puttering a black cloud of diesel smoke. Somewhere on the patio a baby starts crying. Someone has brought their baby to brunch. 

SUZ: Oh my god, check out this lady's hair. WAIT. Okay, now look.

NIK: WOAH. It's like her head is doing lotus pose.

SUZ: Yeah, I took physics and that shouldn't be possible.

NIK: Wait, YOU took physics?

SUZ: Don't act so surprised.

NIK: You never cease to fascinate me. 

SUZ: I got 22% on my final. It was multiple choice. Which  means I would have done better if I had just guessed on all the questions.

NIK: You have other talents.

SUZ: And my professor wore the same shirt every day. 

NIK: That's offensive. 

The waitress returns.

WAITRESS: We still doing okay over here?

NIK: Yeah, can I get a box for this?

WAITRESS: Is a big box okay? We're out of small boxes.

NIK: Yeah, that's fine.

The waitress dispatches. Suzette opens her front-facing camera to check her hair. 

NIK: What if I had said no?

SUZ: What?

NIK: What if I had said 'no, a big box is not okay'?

SUZ: You're an idiot.

NIK: But you married me, so.

SUZ: Because you're a handsome idiot. 

NIK: I'm not just a pair of tits, Suz. 

The waitress returns with a big to-go box and the check. Even after a year of marriage, Suzette still reaches for her wallet because she is an independent woman and wants Nikolai to know that she still considers herself an independent woman. Nikolai throws down his credit card.

SUZ: Thanks babe.

NIK: Of course babe.

SUZ: I need to stop at Home Depot on the way home.

NIK: What business does my woman have in that orange, cedar-scented hell?

SUZ: Need some bolts. The shelf in the closet fell down last week. 

NIK: I hadn't noticed.

SUZ: I noticed that you hadn't noticed.

Nikolai signs the check. He and Suzette scooch out their chairs in unison and Suzette puts her cardigan on. As Nikolai departs from the table, Suzette pulls a 5-dollar-bill out of her wallet and throws it on the table. 

END SCENE.

Cosmic Latte

I love science.
In theory.

Being able explain "everything" sounds nice, doesn't it? Wouldn't that finally elevate mankind to the God-status that we've already arrogantly granted ourselves? 

Once you get into it, however, science is infuriating. Crossed-out numbers and tedium and a lot of dropped expletives and dropped beakers. Type-As with unusual social mannerisms obsessing over finding small things and smaller things and teenier tinier things that are so teeny and tiny that you can't tell where they are and how fast they're going at the same time. Then it turns out they actually might not even exist. 

Reduce reduce reduce. Repeat repeat repeat. Fail fail fail.

Then, one day, mostly through luck and the unbreakable tenacity of scientific will, something coagulates the right way, or whatever, and there's a brief period of Mars-Rover-landing-type celebration. Maybe your PI buys your team pizza and gets sloppy drunk in front of you. You get rejected by 100 journals and one publishes you. Then you realize your study bred more questions than it answered and they're dividing and multiplying like a super-strain. The answers must be smaller. If there is truth, it must be infinitesimal. 

Reduce reduce reduce. Repeat repeat repeat. Ad infinitum until you find something so small that it's infinitely vast. 

Into the void we go again. 

The only time God ever talked to me it was about science. Despite what they say, there is a realm where God and science coexist. I stumbled into it when I was 10. I was really into astronomy at the time, and one night was immersed in a kid's astronomy book called Galaxies, or something. Reading about the Universe (which, apparently, is a latte beige color), an eerie and ominous feeling came over me, like I had suddenly wandered into someplace I wasn't supposed to be. I came to know it as the feeling of "vastness," but at the time, I felt like a kid who went looking for the bathroom but stumbled into the teacher's lounge. It felt wrong. So I asked God if it was okay that I was there.

"Is this right? Are humans even supposed to know about things that are so....big?" 

In a seizing and otherworldly voice that was not heard, but rather implanted into every neuron, "Why would they be there if not for you to discover them?" 

"Wow, okay," thought 10-year-old me, and I went to sleep. Then I grew up to be an acceptably mediocre scientist.

Just in the way that science is seeing things happen that already happen, someday we will come to see what already is. What is indivisible and endless. 

I think that God and science can't "co"exist, because they are the same thing, and they only exist to be discovered.