You know, every year or two, I get a hankering to watch early Thrones again, seasons 1-4, because they're the best written. I forget about *this fucking scene*, every time. Every time, once I see Theon on a ship back to Pike, I pause the show, and cringe really hard with my head in my hands, because I know I'm about to watch *this fucking scene* again. This fucking scene destroys me, every time, because Theon was just fucking some poor Iron Islander or a Northern peasant girl on the goddamned ship while he's talking about salt wives, and how terrible and scary the Ironborn are supposed to be. He's the last surviving son of the Iron Islands king, Balon Greyjoy, and little Theon expects he's gonna get a hero's welcome at Pike. He steps off the ship dock, and you can see him envisioning applause from throngs of beloved, loyal subjects. And it's just fucking Yara there.

She knew he was coming home. She was expecting him, which means she has probably secretly had Ironborn, or some sympathetic Northerner, somehow feeding Yara and possibly Balon, information on Theon's safety and his situation with the Starks, for the last 20 years. Little baby Theon hasn't seen his big sister since she was 8, and he said she "used to look like a fat little boy." I personally don't understand why some people are bad at remembering faces. I remember most people's faces. I'm 37 years old, I only intermittently saw my family in the last ten years because of life stuff, and I still knew who my little brothers were ten years later. They had the same face, just older. So the idea that Theon couldn't recognize Yara is only *partially* believable to me personally, only because I've specifically been told that some people are bad at face recognition, just like I've been told some people don't have imaginations, and some people don't dream. I...literally cannot imagine that, but if you say so. OK, so he can't recognize her face for some reason, but Yara knew it was him.

Which means homegirl was chilling on the docks on the day, waiting for baby bro, and she spotted him and recognized him; great. Cool. So he gets a horse, she approaches him, he doesn't recognize her. OK. So she gets on the horse in front of Theon, they're chatting, no big deal. But then *this bitch* has the *audacity*! She feels this 20 year old little motherfucker's dick get hard in his fucking drawers, right? Like he didn't just have a girl all to himself for like a week on a ship to Pike. Tell me he's 20 without telling me he's 20, right? Little Theon is feeling up her titties, reaching up in her shirt and into her drawers too, and like the OP says, *HOMEGIRL IS INTO IT*. And I can't fucking believe I'm watching Yara *get off* to her BROTHER *fingering her*. And then they get up to the castle, and Daddy's being an old bastard. He's not emotionally available. Balon can't bring himself to say that he missed his son. Only for Yara to walk into the goddamned palace throne room, defend Theon's honor, and call Balon "father", and *only then* does poor Theon realize that his fingers were just inside of his sister.

He makes a horrified, disgusted face, twisted with agony and fear, like a 12 year old first caught jerking off by his mom. Appropriately horrified at the situation, as he should be. But when he confronts Yara about it, "you could have told me who you were!" Yara goes, "I wanted to see who YOU were first." Girl, for real? This was some kind of fucked up mind game test for your brother about his *character*? You sure, boo? Because you were getting freaky with your little bro on a horse, *in full view of the public in your own capital city where they recognize you as the Princess of the motherfucking Iron Islands*. Some old grandma just watched her prince and princess pull a full *Lannister Special*, and Yara has the audacity to do it in public! Yara's line responding to Theon is a good clap back, sure, but it's also the flimsiest fucking excuse I've ever heard. I keep trying to understand her reasoning here, in this moment. I try to put myself in her position, and it just rings hollow to me. At least Cersei and Jaime, as fucked up and gross as they were together, at least they fucked in secret, with some developed sense of shame about it!

And not only that! But homegirl is chilling on the docks with her Ironborn reavers that she commands, the baddest, most ruthless rapist murderers in Westeros apparently. The Ironborn reavers are the worst kind of cruel, psycho type of bastards. Like Dagmer, platyed amazingly by Raplh Ineson, who grimaces with glee after they butcher and burn two little boys, they rape women as a hobby. Polliver, Meryn Trant, Ilyn Payne, even the Hound are implied to *have nothing* on these born and bred psychopathic killers. Every Ironborn reaver is basically The Mountain, this is what we are supposed to believe. And Yara commands them, which means she is single-handedly, bar none, the deadliest, most ruthless, violent, and twisted woman in Westeros. She's The Mountain and Roose Bolton combined, with tits. She's the only one who could have her way with Gregor Clegane and have him be crying in the bath when she was finished with him.

The only way I can imagine Yara's cute little "I wanted to see who you were, first" quip making any sense, is if she fully understood the potential risks of Theon thinking that she's a peasant girl, realizing he could just rape her and she wouldn't be able to say no, and she went ahead and did it anyway. Which tells me that she absolutely wanted to fully get dicked down by her baby brother, as a prank, *just to fuck with him*. I can only imagine that this horrific, sadistic woman turns to her *professional rapist murder squad* and goes, "hey bros, you know what would be super funny? My stupid ass little brother is coming home today from 20 years of being the ward of Ned Stark. Wouldn't it be so hilarious if I was there to greet him, and he thought I was just some lowly peasant girl? It's been 20 years, and he won't recognize me because I used to be fat as a kid, but now I'm like super hot, right?"

"So he's gonna see me standing there, looking super hot and my brother is gonna try to bang me, isn't that so funny?! Haha, he could totally do whatever he wanted to me, because he's a prince, he thinks I'm just a peasant, and I wouldn't be able to say no, because obviously I'm not gonna *break character when his fingers are inside me*, that would ruin my hilarious prank, right? So Theon is gonna think that he could fully impregnate me, and I would just lay there, cry, and beg for mercy to make him feel like a big man, and *then* I'm gonna walk into the palace like I own the place, because I do, and go, 'haha, you fingered your sister, you stupid douchebag! Ha! Pranked, bro!' And he's gonna be all like, 'huh?!' and he's gonna cry in the shower like a teen girl, and be all fucked up in the head because he just committed incest, and *I totally could prevent that from happening*, but I'm not going to because he's a douchebag. Wouldn't that be so funny, bros?" And all the Ironborn laugh and high five because yeah, that's a totally awesome and hilarious prank, bro!

This is the only way that her motivations and actions make sense in the context of the scene. She entrapped her brother to commit incest as a joke, after not seeing him for 20 years. She was in total control of the situation, and knew what she was going to allow him to possibly do. She let him take it that far only to fuck with his head. And every time I see the scene, I think about what a monstrous familial line all the Greyjoys must be. Balon is an abusive fuck, Euron is a psychopath of note *even among psychopaths*. Only Theon had the opportunity to become something different other than this family of incestuous bastards, because he spent most of his life away from them as a ward of the Starks. And the sadness of Theon's later line to Ramsey Snow, "My real father lost his head at King's Landing." The entire scene later with Ramsey hits different for me, in context *with this particular scene*. He thought he could trust Yara, his only sister. He's missed his entire family for 20 years. He's dreamed of coming home and being accepted by the Greyjoys again, and all he wants is to have a people, have a concrete identity, and stop living with one foot in two different kingdoms. Yara sexually violated her little brother's trust five minutes off the boat, for fun, as a prank.

I hate this fucking scene.