What I've Learned from Game of Thrones

SPOILER ALERT!!! You've been warned.

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 I don't like gore. I also don't like seeing explicit sex scenes, sexual violence, or excessive crude language. I'm a tender person, and harsh things stick with me for far too long, so I'm VERY careful with what I allow my eyes to see and my ears to hear. That's why I hadn't been watching Game of Thrones. I was intrigued, though, because I have enjoyed reading The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Harry Potter series seeing those movies. Actually, to say I enjoyed them is an understatement, and I couldn't help but wonder, What will happen when winter comes?

 I was visiting my family in New York City a few weeks ago when the final episode aired, and they seemed to have been pretty deeply impacted by the previous episode - something about how Daeneyrs reacted to a surprising beheading and what happened after she said Dracarys (had to look that up) to Drogon. I watched the final episode with them, fully prepared to have my hands in front of my eyes pretty much the whole time. That last episode wasn't too bad, though, so I was further intrigued by what came before all of that. Arya seemed pretty dope. I had seen folks posting about her on Twitter previously. Something about, "Not today," and since she was in the final episode, I figured she must have made some kind of impressive boss move and survived. I wondered how Bran ended up in that wheelchair, and where the dragons came from.

Thankfully, I discovered VidAngel - a tool that allows you to filter out what you don't want to see/hear in shows/movies. After just about a week of watching, I'm already on season 5, episode 4 (not because I've been aggressively bingeing [I think I'd rank my binge level as medium], but because my filters make the episodes a lot shorter). Here's what I've learned so far:

1. There's a such thing as siblings being too close.
2. Be careful climbing around and looking through windows. What you see can change your life.
3. Rats don't like being in a heated bucket.
4. If you promise to marry person X, and then you marry person Y, the father of person X may take it personally. If someone shows you who they are, believe them. If someone shows you how upset they are, believe that, too. #RedWedding
5. Serena and Cairo both brought back obsidian when they went to Western Canada with People to People as Student Ambassadors years ago. I just thought the stones were interesting, but it turns out that they can come in really handy.
6. Don't let creepy, glowy blue-eyed creatures from the woods hold your baby. 
7. I knew Rose Leslie as Gwen Dawson on Downton Abbey and Maia Rindell on The Good Fight. Turns out she was a really a wildling.
8. If you volunteer to be someone's champion, don't get all caught up trying to get your opponent to make a confession when you've already won. It could go really wrong.
9. Be careful near moon doors.
10. If you mistreat one of your children, you should be sure to lock the bathroom door when you're in there. That child might come in and find you when you're vulnerable and bad things can happen.

For those of you who have watched the whole series, winter has come and gone, but Winter is still coming for me!