Although I fully expect her to bite it within the next few weeks.

I love that Brienne isn’t sexy. I’ve seen plenty of women warriors in TV and movies, but they wear suspiciously sternum-cracking armor, they’re magically better at combat than the men around them, and they look fabulous. Hollywood’s compensating for sexism, sure, in the laziest way possible.

In Rogue One, for like three seconds we see one of the fighter pilots say something like, “Yep, got it.” And … she’s wearing a regular old flight suit. She’s not special. She’s part of the army. The moment is magical.

We got a lot more than a moment with Brienne. She walks like The Hulk, her armor’s designed to keep her alive, her hair’s a messy crop, she’s exhausted, she hasn’t bathed in weeks. I love it every time she goes NYAAAAAAAAAARG when she’s killing zombies. She makes combat look hard. And it is hard. Her character suggests how a woman can get to be the best of the best in her field – by working her ass off.

I’m five foot seven, so I’ve got nothing on Gwendoline Christie’s six foot three. But I also crop my hair. I like machines. I choose my clothes based on what I won’t destroy in a few days. I think that Brienne is a cisgender, butch woman, but Westerosi doesn’t have words for those things, so she thinks she’s doing womanhood wrong. I also have questions about whether I’m feminine enough, and I love Brienne for it.

There are some characters who just stick with you, and I’ve kept a running list of their names. Brienne of Tarth is one of them. Lee Scoresby. Shevek. Susan Calvin. Brienne.