ASOIAF and GOT: Who is Quaithe? What is her role in ASOIAF? And why has the show cut her after Season 2?

Dany met from Qarth in a Clash of Kings. Since then, for some reason, she sends visions to Dany to manipulate her but no one seems to know why. Her messages and visions (which I assume are sent by by glass candle) are couched in fantasy-mystic crypto-speak that seem designed to drive Dany (and the reader) insane.

Some theories about who she really is (since she wears a wooden mask that obscures her face) include:

• Shiera SeaStar (legendary old Targaryen woman, Bloodraven’s lover. Some kind of sorceress, but would be way old by now.)
• Ashara Dayne (no evidence)
• Alleras/Sarella, using Archmaester Marwyn’s glass candle (I guess because she is called the Spinx, who speaks in riddles, as Quaithe does)
• Daenerys from the distant future. (Yes, I have read this.)
• a figment of Daenerys’s mad-Targaryen imagination.

For all I know she is none of these things, but she clearly has an agenda. But it is impossible to say what it is, or even if she is on Dany’s side or not.

As to why the show cut her out after Season 2….well.

• They really cut out a LOT of MUCH MORE IMPORTANT things than that.
• I assume that whatever Quaithe is, and whoever she is, her role in the books dovetails with something they have cut from the show, thus rendering her character and its role meaningless. Back in Season 2 they had not planned so far and didn’t quite know what they were going to cut: I don’t care what they say, that is obvious.
• Also they seem to have some kind of hangup with characters seeing visions, having dreams or flashbacks other than Bran. They’ve had a few, but for the most part they think that kind of storytelling is “lame” even though it is used in most shows and stories.

GOT/ASOIAF: Why has Arya suddenly changed in Season 7? She seems so psychotic and unreasonable

 I think this has always been the hidden dark side to Arya’s arc.

The audience may cheer it when she cuts the eyes out of a pedaphile like show-Meryn Trant and tortures him before killing but when you think about it, it is pretty fucked up. You have to be in a very, very, very dark place to be able to do that. Even to a pedaphile.

Arya is traumatized. This is a little more clear in the books.

She has seen members of her household slain for no reasons: even the Septa who helped bring her up. She has survived on the streets. She has seen her father beheaded. She has starved and eaten insects to survive. She has witnessed atrocities right in front of her face on the road to Harrenhal: rapes, murder, child-killings, dismemberments, baby killings, horrific and unspecified torture for no reason at all; things that made all human existence seem completely meaningless, destitute and utterly bestial. In Harrenhal she was was physically and psychologically abused, and threatened with sexual abuse more than once; she witnessed gang rapes on women who had been put in stocks naked for anybody to have. She got to a point where she hid her personality down deep and became uncharacterisitically “mouse”-like and reticent. All this in the huge, dehumanizing expanse of the gigantic mega-fortress of spooky-ass Harrenhal.

The only thing that gave her a sense of confidence and control over her uncontrollable situation was murder, which she chose to exercise her uncompromising sense of justice.

But then she went to Braavos and was subjected to brainwashing and training that made her a literally supernatural killer, but also warped her way of looking at the world.

Meanwhile, Sansa has been on a different voyage: one less physically brutal, but psychologically tough: but one which has seen her getting a political educaton from Cersei, Joffrey, and Littlefinger.

Sansa also has a sense of justice and good but she thinks like a politician; inherently dishonest, in which compromises are made on the way to a greater goal.

Arya is not equipped to think this way. She is younger, she sees things in black and white.

She is not equipped to understand the kind of compromises that Sansa has made; the kind of compromises that any effective leader has to make. She reacts in an extreme and violent way

(Granted, she is coming off as stupider than in former seasons. Perhaps she is playing a subtle game in order to fully gauge Sansa’s intentions and she is not so stupid. But mostly, I think that the show has done a poor job earlier in letting is in on the dark side of Arya’s psyche, painting her instead as a humorous hero who kills the baddies without much repercussion for her soul or character.)

ASOIAF: Why is there so much emphasis on the stench of Tywin's corpse in A Feast For Crows?

It works on several different levels.

But it should be clear: it is a mystery. Pycelle claims to have removed many of Tywin’s organs, to stave off the rot, and I believe him. But it’s not only the smell…it is the fact that he is literally decomposing at a faster than normal rate…his mouth twisted into a hysterical grin, his skin splitting and oozing fluid….

I mean, the metaphor is clear. Tywin Lannister stinks. Tywin Lannister was rotten.

And I actually think that is the main thing.

GRRM is showing his personal contempt for a character who forced his own son to participate in the gang rape of his own wife.

It’s not that subtle, either: just as Arya Stark is constantly associated with water and baptismal imagery, Tywin Lannister is consistently associated with shit in the books.

1. First of all, there is the infamous “Tywin Lannister shits gold” meme, that Tyrion reflects upon in Game of Thrones and comes up here and there throughout the series. And ends up being an elaborately set up punchline to his death.
2. When Arya first approaches Harrenhal ,she is assaulted by the smell:
   
   'The stink of the Lannister host reached Arya well before she could make out the devices on the banners that sprouted along the lakeshore, atop the pavilions of the westermen. From the smell, Arya could tell that Lord Tywin had been here some time. The latrines that ringed the encampment were overflowing and swarming with flies, and she saw faint greenish fuzz on many of the sharpened stakes that protected the perimeters."
   —A Clash of Kings
3. After the Battle of the Blackwater, Tywin’s ceremonious display of majestically entering in full panoply and honour as the “saviour of King’s Landing” is marred by the horse he rode in on shitting on the floor. (Fuck them both, by the way.)
4. And, of course, most obviously, there is the fact that he is killed on the crapper in the midst of a leisurely shit by his son —fitting, since he had shat on Tyrion all his life; and seeing as how he had made Tyrion clean out and unclog the plumbing system at Casterly Rock, I am probably talking literally.

(There may be more: I remember reading a list once compiling the associations.)

Beyond that, if you’re looking for a non-meta-explanation, there is the theory that Oberyn Martell may have poisoned him at the dinner he had with him, using the poison that basically constipates a man, until he dies from a build up of…foul substances. It is a plausible theory that MIGHT explain the smell: I am not a medical doctor so I can’t be sure if this is how it works, but, you know, maybe the built-up shit permeated him on a molecular level or something.

It’s one of the best minor theories and is well-liked by many fans, even it it’s ultimately unnecessary for the story.

Or perhaps the gods are subtly making their opinion of the Lion of Casterly Rock known.

Tywin’s spirit ought to be grateful for his rot. Weird things happen when Lannisters lie dead in state: at least the stench kept Jaime and Cersei from getting blood all over the coffin.

ASOIAF: How was the Red WEdding kept secret?

The whole society is built on the oath you make to your liege lord. You swear to do his bidding; in return he promises to protect you.

It’s not the best system in the world, but it is what you got. At least you’re not a slave in Essos.

You might argue that Robb was the King so his will mattered more than your liege lord.

But then you might argue that Robb was not a legitimate king, but that Joffrey was the legitimate king and Robb was an accursed rebel.

This would, of course, get tied up in the courts for years, as counter-suits followed suits. And it takes a keen legal mind to parse out what is legally right and wrong, and then you realize the court system in Westeros is pretty crap, so you have wasted all this thought on it for nothing.

But these people are not a collection of the finest legal minds WEsteros has to offer. They are a bunch of superstitious illiterates with crotch-rot so they don’t even think about it too much. Hell, they’d just as soon have Mad King Aerys in charge.

So you just do whatever the guy above you says, because after all there are repercussions if you don’t. Plus you hear that weird Stark kid is one of them wargs.

You don’t mess with Roose Bolton when he is your liege lord.

Seriously. That guy flays people for the hell of it. He rapes his subjects’ wives and has their husbands killed. If you talk to him when he doesn’t want you to he will just rip your tongue out. And he doesn’t even get off on it. He is mean, yes but he just doesn’t care. He would yawn while your tongue was getting ripped out. He’d probably just toss it in the fire when he was done.

He holds meetings in bed with leeches hanging from him. He has eyes like chips of ice. He speaks so quietly you have to strain to hear him and he says things like “I am not a man to be undone.” Which is creepy in and of itself.

The Freys, by contrast, just smell bad, because their clothes are always damp, but they doesn’t mean they won’t hang your ass if you disobey them. Worse — Old Man Frey might get a hankering for your daughter.

Heh, heh, heh.

The good Freys, like Olyvar, were kept away…possibly sent to another castle so that they wouldn’t snitch on their damp-clothed brethren.

The rest of the Freys were just following orders. Who knows, some of them might have hung back and watched instead of comitting the vile crime. Maybe a few even did snitch.

Not enough.

Written Feb 21

ASOIAF: Reading a Feast For Crows, and the Ironborn bore me to tears. Do they get any better?

They get better.

(Spoiler from Winds of Winter below)

I was bored by the Ironborn chapters when I first read A Feast for Crows. They do get a little better in that book.

Asha and Victarion’s chapters in Dance with Dragons are pretty kick-ass the first time you read them, especially Asha’s.

I think the first time I read them, they suffered because I had just read the most ass-kickingest book ever written (A Storm of Swords) and I really wanted to get back to the real story, awready!!

When you think about it, though, they definitely have their place. There is definitely good food for discussion and springboarding to theories in those chapters

Oddly, the second time I read the books, I enjoyed them much better, a LOT better —and mainly for the world-building/history Tolkien-type stuff which I suspect bores many.

For whatever reason, GRRM is inspired by the Ironborn and I think they are important.

The reasons I liked them were:

• Victarion is actually pretty funny, as both a muscle-bound Conan-type uber-warrior with the IQ of a flea. Utter badass, utter moron. Villain. Victim.
• Asha has a pretty good sex scene and an awesome battle in the dark woods in ADWD.
• Iron Island world building. Seems superfluous (though I like that stuff — did I mention I am a huge Tolkien fan?) but the more I think about it, the more I think all that pre-human civilization stuff means something important to the story.
• Rodrik the Reader. A cool tertiary character.
• Euron is the villain that puts all the previous baddies of the series to shame.
• The Forsaken chapter from the not-yet-released Winds of Winter chapter is just awesome. For me, the best of the released chapters yet. One of my top ten chapters in the entire series. And it’s an Aeron Greyjoy chapter.

(still searching for a picture online of Aeron Greyjoy strapped to a mast, sailing on an Ocean of Blood with a pregnant tongueless Falia Flowers next to him.)

Written Feb 22

Game of Thrones/ASOIAF: Does the show's portrayal of Daenery mean that the "evil Daenerys" theories are wrong?

aenerys is not “evil.”

That is just a gross misreading of the books. It’s ridiculous: it requires a fuck ton of shoehorning.

Look. The reader is free to interpret GRRM’s characters any way they choose: they defy easy categorization. That is why people debate the merits of Stannis or Tywin Lannister. Stannis could be an extremely justice-minded man who is uncorruptiable with an indomitable will; or he can be an envious and often cruel power-hungry tyrant with a chip on his shoulder who would sacrifice anything to get his way.

He is both.

Tywin is a strong Machiavellian prince whose shame in childhood has given him a character that simply will not bear disrespect. He wants what is best for his family and his legacy; or he is a narcissistic cruel jerk who had his son’s wife gang-raped (among many other monstrous acts) due to a fear that his precious reputation might be slightly tarnished.

He is both.

Daenerys, like those others is is a morally grey character; her heart is usually in the right place; she is courageous, adaptable and a survivor; but she is trying to govern in an ungovernable situation and is forced to make choices that do not necessarily go off well. And sometimes are just plain bad.

And she has a nasty temper.

Daenerys, Stannis and Tywin are not the only morally grey characters in A Song of Ice and Fire. Every single character in the book is pretty much some shade of grey. Even Jon Snow and Ned Stark, have a few shades of grey to them in the books, though they are the closest to traditional fantasy heroes there are.

Now, Dany has a lot of power: and that power is essentially destructive: and she isgoing to wreak destruction. Although the show has largely foregone this, it willhappen in Winds of Winter. It is clearly foreshadowed.

She will fight much more.

And there will be blood. Innocent blood, not just enemies like the Tarlys who chose their end knowingly.

Euron and the Lannisters and the rest will all also play their bloody parts — espeically Euron. I believe that he and Dany are going to fight in the books with dragons.

But she is never going to be “evil.” She will continue to be grey.

She will continue to have her heart in the right place; she will continue to make some questionable decisions in anger; and she will continue to destroy when she chooses too.

She is caught up in a destiny by forces she cannot control and things in Westeros have a way of spiralling out of control for everybody anyway.

Now one thing more: Book-Tyrion and Show-Tyrion have become vastly different creatures. Show Tyrion’s peaceful ways may not be echoed in the books: that guy wants revenge. Its still not certain if he will let that desire go or continue letting it drive him down dark roads.

And Daenerys may be guided by him.

But mostly I think that her destruction is going to be collatteral damage in a Euron-Dany-aegon- Cersei war. With dragons on two of the four sides.

This is Song of Ice and Fire, not Harry Potter.

Though there are some evil character, there is no Voldemort.

Game of Thrones: What was so bad about the letter Sansa wrote?

It is not bad; she wrote it under duress and without a clue as to what was actually happening. Cersei made her write it; and she told Sansa that it would help her father, Ned.

Everyone who read it (Robb, Catelyn) knew it was bullshit right away. They knew it was a threat being expressed to them that Sansa would suffer if they did not bend the knee.

Arya’s objections are irrational and actually echo many Sansa-hating fans argument; just as Sansa’s arguments echo Sansa-fans arguments. You could literally read arguments about Sansa like that every day five or six years ago on the Internet on Ice and Fire pages. (Before it became this global phenomenon.)

But on the show, in particular, Arya’s arguments make no sense considering she played “cupbearer” to Tywin freaking Lannister herself for nearly an entire season.

Personally, I think Sansa missed a trick by not just telling Arya -- in explicit detail -- what she had experienced in the Red Keep and other places. Perhaps if Arya had known that she had taken beatings from grown men, witnessed their aunt murdered after she tried to murder her, been subjected to multiple rapes and beatings and threats from Ramsay, perhaps she'd lose the pyschotic gleam in her eyes. 

This show.

ASOIAF: Why does Ned Stark act so pious about Jaime and Cersei's treason when he committed treason by sheltering Jon Snow?

There are worse crimes than treason. Letting your friend murder your baby nephew is one of them.

Now, not telling Robert about Jon was treason, arguably. Though if everybodythinks that he is Ned’s son, including Jon himself…and if nobody else really knows he is actually Rhaegar’s son….

Where is the harm?

For all practical purposes, barring some, I don’t know, unforeseen event where Jon’s crippled brother/cousin Bran sees the past through a magical network of weirwood trees — which Ned has no idea exists — it really is no harm to Robert himself. And Ned preserves a baby’s life. Who is also a kin. And there is no crime greater than kinslaying in Westeros.

In fact, by telling Cersei Ned also acted to preserve Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen’s life too: because make no mistake: Robert would have killed them too.

Ned acts consistently. He is not a traitor at heart. He moved to keep Jon alive and make sure nobody (except for that guy in the swamps) knew about it: Jon packs off to the Wall, swears an oath of celebacy. No one is harmed. Bob is Ned’s uncle.

Written Feb 10

Game of Thrones: How would Game of Thrones Kings and Queens do as US Presidential candidates?

First of all, let me make one thing clear: a king is not a president. So the ones that would make a good king would not necessarily be a good president.

Renly: As a king, he would set a dangerous and destructive precedent: a precedent that the candidate wiht the biggest army always wins.

As a president, however, his political skills — knowing how to please the lords that matter, through charm, persuasion or bribery, compromising to achieve his goals — and his rock star-like good looks (in the books); his commoner-pleasing skills in his career as an otherwise mediocre sportsman, as well as his relationship to sports superstar Loras Tyrell would make him the perfect candidate for the shadowy uber-rich Tyrells bankrolling his campaign.

A politics-as-usual candidate: the Establishment.

His vice president: Mace Tyrell.

Could be Republican or Democrat but probably goes Democrat due to homosexuality: it doesn’t really matter anyway, all that matters is power and the clothes that come with it.Campaign Slogan: Working Together to Grow Strong!

Robb Stark: A true conservative — in the pre-Trump sense — military man: no nonsense and tough, fair-minded and just. A James Mattis type.

He is not necessarily always going to say what the people want to hear: but they don’t want him to say what they want to hear: they want the truth.

His weakness is he has his ‘my way or the highway’ approach that all the Starks — Ned Stark, Jon Snow have: these are not natural politicians.

Vice-President: The Blackfish.

Campaign Slogan: Security. Family. Duty. Honor. For our Nation.

Daenerys: Has incredible vision and otherworldly charisma; and knows how to say the right thing to the People. Tri-lingual. But does she promise too much?

She has an egalitarian, inclusive ideology, complete with open borders for foreigners and freedom for even the most lowly.

Has difficulty realizing her visions of a better world; the political realities drag her down. Behind the scenes she is a bit clueless, : but it’s the public face that matters. Clinches the minority vote.

Vice-President: Tyrion Lannister, aka, the twisted little demon monkey.

She is sort of like a liberal Reagan. Mixed with a dash of Bernie Sanders. Campaign Slogan: Break the Wheel Today for a Better America Tomorrow.

Stannis: Republican. As. Fuck.

Wants to ban whorehouses and chop off the hands of drug dealers. Castrates rapists — personally.

Stern and Just, his lack of humor, frowny presence, sarcastic belittling quips at Daenerys during the debates, and harsh, grating voice means he doesn’t make it through the primaries despite his incredible military record.

Vice-president: Davos. ("He cut off my fingers: and I respect him for that.")

He fails but becomes Attorney General, though, for Robb. Failed Campaign Slogan: Clean up this mess!

Euron Greyjoy: The Alt-Right candidate. Comes out of nowhere. Doesn’t have any organization at all. Thinks organization and plans are for wusses. He does have big mouth though.

Mocks the disabled loudly, creating an outrage across America. Belittles women constantly, which puts everybody in a huff. Doesn’t make any sense and celebrities mock his ridiculous sideburns. Basically just says “fuck” a lot on live television. Encourages violence.

Proudly waves a Nazi flag and then says “I would never wave a Nazi flag.”

Then says “Yeah, I waved a Nazi flag. Swastikas mean lots of things in different cultures.”

Then says: "Yeah, I’m a nazi.”

Then says “I am no nazi. I never said that, I never said that.”

IN league with the White Walkers who tweak things so that he wins.

Then all his supporters defend him saying things like: Yes, He is vile but everybody else is worse.

He spends his time skewering babies and basically trying to blow up the world While his supporters blandly pretend not to notice and say “Thank God Daenerys didn’t make it: she totally screwed up Meereen.”

Vice president: The Night King.

Campaign Slogan: I’m going to totally destroy this country!!!! You stupid idiots!! Sad!

Jon Snow: the Green Candidate.

Surprisingly popular due exclusively to good looks. The Powers around him seek to make him the "Justin Trudeau face of America.”

His campaign is badly run by a shabby organization of back-biting northerners who are too busy considering defecting to other campaigns to really work for him. His campaign is marked by gaffes of him saying whatever comes into his head. Still, he is so cute, he makes it through the primaries to become a surprisingly viable third party candidate. Late Night comedians have a field day skewering his po’-faced pronouncements and claims of resurrection from a magical sponge bath administered by a red topless babe. (It revitalized me! Really!)

Accused of nepotism when he appoints his also-hot sister as his Vice-President.

Still, all the white women vote for him.

Campaign Slogan: The Dead are Coming. I have seen the Night King.

---

The Winner, as we know already, is Euron Greyjoy. Of course.

ASOIAF: Did Roose Bolton order the attack on Winterfell?

I strongly believe he did.

Ramsay left Theon to “gather friends” to help. Then returned with a whole army several weeks later.

I think there was plenty of time for Ramsay to send a raven to Harrenhal; according to the fan-created Timeline here — which is probably not one hundred percent accurate, but helps—

• “Reek”(Ramsay in disguise) left Winterfell Bolton got the news of the Bran and Rickon’s “deaths” on September 11th;
• On Sept. 26th, Harrenhal (Bolton and Arya) heard the news of Bran and Rickon’s “deaths”. Also of Robb’s Wedding to Jeyne Westerling. Roose had already learned of the Battle of the Blackwater days before.
• On October 1st, Ramsay sacks Winterfell.

This last date is the most speculative and I would probably put the second one earlier, too because Riverrun received the news of Robb’s wedding to Jeyne Westerling on the 16th. And I think that the news would have arrived to Harrenhal a day or two later.

I think that once The Lannisters allied with the Tyrells and defeated Stannis, Robb’s goose in the Riverlands was cooked and his campaign was in trouble. With no other legitimate sons alive, Arya lost and Sansa in the hands of the Lannisters, Roose made his decision, knowing that the Frey’s were going to be pissed off.

So….

• . He approved the sack of Winterfell.
• Ordered a doomed, daft attack on Duskendale, to get rid of a portion of Robb’s army and
• started planning with Frey, pissed off at Robb’s vow-breaking at the same time.
  
  All this before Jaime fell into his clutches,—which the Leech Lord would also have known about days before; which was just one more sign to him that the Stark cause was in major trouble.

ASOIAF: Why does Jaime love Tyrion?

A Lannister always pays his debts.

The Lannisters, like most families, are a unique and strange unit with weird depths and dark spots, some of which the public sees, and some which are secrets and most of which revolve around their crazy-ass narcissistic father. Who is so full of himself, he has portraits like this made of him:

hey are a in unique position: not only the head of their region, which, for all intents and purposes is a semi-autonomous state in its own right; but their family is also the richest in the country. Their father’s unbridled narcissism has led to such a fearsome reputation that everybody in their little country and a good deal of people outside of it fear the Lannisters, seeing the name as synonymous with the rape and murder of innocent people for perceived insults: or simply for knowing someone who offered a perceived insult. (Masha Heddle, or the servants of the Reynes of Castamere.) Imagine Jaime’s world.

Your family literally hires homicidal maniacs to rape, steal, burn, torture and kill innocent men, women, children, babies, animals.

Your father never fucking smiles at you and spends all his time looking at you like he is going to vomit all over your clean white scale mail. You are expected to be great, unyielding, strong, smart and advance the reputation. Everything you do is a disappointment. You are not allowed to marry who you want, or do what you want. You are not allowed to travel. YOu are not allowed to choose your destiny. You are one of the best badasses in the country and you should be doing deeds that the poets sing about for millennia but instead you are trapped in a dead end job in a city where everyone is trying to fellate you or sodomize you. Metaphorically speaking, of course.Your boss thinks you suck. Your colleagues, are either a bunch of nobodies or jerks who have sticks up their asses and look down on you.

The damn peasants spit when they hear your name because you sacrificed your honor to save thousands of people from certain death.

And if you want to have sex with your sister, who is totally the only girl in the kingdom hot enough for your utter hotness, you had just better forget that nonsense, buster. It is so unfair.

To make matters worse, your family is intelligent, displaying a keen judgement of character that, if not blunted by the ego and narcissism which your father is trying to cram down your throat 24/7, is pretty accurate and right on. Furthermore, you have a cynical and dark sense of humor that no one in all of po’-faced Westeros gets but you and your siblings! I mean, what can you do but laugh when you see the bones of somebody swinging in the breeze, someone who just happened to have unwittingly served roast chicken to somebody who pissed off your father?

Who can you relate to? The servants with their foreheads placed to the ground? Your bannermen, who smile and laugh at you no matter what you say? Your peers, who view you as the power-mad murderers of babies? Varys the goddamn spider? Maybe Littlefinger, but you can’t help but think he’s just a wimpy little pencil pusher trying to get above himself. There are, like, a handful of people you relate to: your siblings, and to some extent your uncles, aunt and cousin and that is it.

But Tyrion is special.

He grew up crippled, the victim of his father’s scorn. The victim of your beloved sister’s non inconsiderable cruelty. But he grew up because you loved him and he loved you and you were the source of the love that sustained him into adulthood. Tyrion is smarter than you; he is more patient than you; he thinks things over (quickly!); he always makes the intelligent choice; he sees to the heart of every situation and usually accurately; he is free to fuck with abandon anybody who will take his coin and he can do it all: from engineering saddles to fixing a plumbing system to organizing the defense of a starving city to running a continent wide empire in the middle of a war competently. All you can do is fight. You are not even a particularly good general.

And he is funny. He is literally the only guy you can cut loose with and laugh your ass off at the sad sickness of it all the sad sickness you grew up in.

What’s more, Tyrion worships you. You are everything he is not, he thinks. You are the one source of love, the source of light that sustained Tyrion when he was growing up in darkness.

(And you fucked him over and ruined his life and only chance at love but he doesn’t know that.)

Yet, he loves you for it. And his love, which you don’t really deserve is actually the only real love you get in this life.

You owe Tyrion.

Written July 14th

Game of Thrones, Season 7 episiode 5: Eastwatch. What do you think of the Quest Beyond the Wall...and how do you think it will play out

“We’re all breathing.”

—King Jon Snow the Astute

I think it was pretty bad-ass moment even though I think the idea (to capture a wight and bring it to Cersei) is totally…totally…totally…stupid.

Let me get this straight: they are going to run through a blizzard, one Valyrian steel sword, one flaming sword, four regular swords and a hammer — up against a huge, rapacious horde of thousands of ice demons and zombies and grisly looking skelatons — the same guys who tore it up in Hardhome — stealthily throw a net over one of the zombies, sling it over their shoulder and run back to the Wall with it squirming in the net or the sack or whatever?

Gee. What could go wrong with that brilliant plan?

Yeah. That’s not going to happen. It is stupid.

And this is not even Jon’s idea. It’s Tyrion’s. And the Hound is just like, “yep, sounds like a good idea. Let’s get goin’ boys. ”

Please.

As to my prediction of the Quest: 

Beric and Thoros get killed, like immediately.

 Jon kills a few monsters, as do Sandor, Gendry and Jorah. 

Then , they all realize what a ridiculously bad idea this was (The Hound says “Whose fucking idea was this? Yours? Because this was a stupid idea”) turn around and high tail it back to the wall as fast as their feet can carry them, pursued by the others. It ends on a cliffhanger. 

They pray on their feet for a deux ex machina.

Game of Thrones: Season 7 Episode 5 "Eastwatch" review

I thought it was a well done if not particularly exciting episode. I guess I’ll give it 3.0/5 for the (for me) stirring ending.

• Utah: First of all I think the show is doing a good job at making Daenerys a grey character — not an evil villain (at least not yet) but not the White Messiah of earlier seasons. I give that credit, because they are not real good at that kind of thing.
  
  But there is a bit of a mixed message here.
  
  The show (and I am talking about the show, here, not the books) has hammered the theme that “mercy=foolishness”; there is a sort of “only the strong and ruthless survive in the Game of Thrones theme that has been very consistently expressed since Season 1. It has been hammered so relentlessly that there is simply no other way for the casual viewer to take it other than a rousing victory.
  
  I do feel for Tyrion walking through the ashes looking at the charred corpses, which seem consciously set up to echo old WWII photographs at Nagasaki or Hiroshima.
  
  When you think about it, her surprise attack was no different than Robb Stark’s surprise attack on Jaime’s army, even down to the lack of scouts. She just had different weapons. More effective ones.
  
   So I have to roll my eyes at the moral outrage that the show is trying to get me to — kind of— feel.
  
  But I see Randyll “The good and noble” Tarly is on that side too.
  
   This is a motherfucker who threatened to hunt Sam down and rip out his motherfucking heart. I don’t feel sorry for him. Let him burn.
  
  I do feel bad for poor Rickon Tarly. He is a likable enough guy. And hot to boot.
  But then, he also comes off as kind of dopey, so no great loss.
  
  Some quibbles with the first scene: Why does Tyrion say “One great house has already been wiped out?” Which house is he talking about? The Tyrells? The Martells? The Baratheons? At this rate the only house that is going to last is the Greyjoys just because they are the most annoying.
• Dragonstone: As far as the Jon-Drogon scene goes, it was predictable. The only thing surprising in it was how utterly filthy Jon’s hands are underneath those fine leather gloves. I know he has been mining for obsidian, but you’d think he’d wash his hands afterwards.
  
  The Tyrion/Varys scene just didn’t work for me: again, it is the mixed message of the themes that the show gives out.
  
   Here you have the two most cloying characters in the show demonstrating how utterly emasculated they have become: come on, the Tyrion and Varys of earlier seasons took action. All these guys do is mope and, in Varys’ case, recite second-rate 90s-style slam poetry.
  
   I totally expected Varys to magically sprout a long nineties goatee during that recitation, which too consciously seems to borrow from Niemöller’s poem. (First they came. ) Just — you know, conciously evoking the Holocaust, however subtle the reference is, as an analogy to a battle won is weird.
  
  It’s the second inappropriate WWII reference in one episode.
  
   If you want to make an analogy between Dany’s victory and WWII, wouldn’t Dresden be closer to it?
  If Dresden had been filled with soldiers who had just handed the Allies with a pair of game-changing losses, that is. Which it wasn’t.
  
  No, Dorf and Dullman are trying to plumb depths that simply ain’t there.
  The Jorah scene was a bit meh for me. I really feel that the whole greyscale thing was utterly meaningless. Why include it at all? In the books, it is easy to predict a greyscale epidemic breaking out to add to all the other horrors. If they are not going to do that in the show; and if Sam’s healing Greyscale doesn’t somehow contribute to the plot(which it doesn’t), what was the point? It is just soap opera: and I am not a fan of soap opera. I’m quite annoyed at that whole storyline, but now that it’s over: good to have Jorah back.
  
  I foresee a Jon/Jorah/Dany threesome. Making a three-headed dragon. IF you know what I mean.
• Winterfell: the Ravens flying over the mountains and over the wall was a cool-looking scene. The eye-popping effects continue. I’m not sure what the point of it was, since Bran already knows they are coming. But still, I liked it. But then I have technical questions: when warging a flock of ravens, do you have to jump from raven to raven constantly? Or can you just kind of blanket warg them? Because, if the former, that would be exhausting.
• The Arya/Sansa/Littlefinger stuff was way more interesting to me. Probably the best thing about this episode.
  
  You see the Arya/Sansa rivalry rearing it’s head: sure to fuel tons of Quora questions that essentially boil down to: “Why is Sansa so bad and Arya so good?” that I will be passing on this coming week.
  
  The thing is, Sansa is right and Arya is wrong. I think it is kind of true to their characters though.
  
  And I love how Littlefinger deftly manipulates Arya…or does he? 
  Arya can see lies, so I can see this backfiring on him. Arya has seen someone reporting to him: it seems reasonable that she knows that he knows of her argument with Sansa. what I wonder is if even that altercation, where Arya was so, frankly, unreasonable, was staged by Arya to trap the ‘Finger? Tune in next week.
• King’s Landing. The Tyrion/Jaime bit was well done enough, I suppose.
  
  Has anybody ever made a compilation reel of Nicolaj Coster-Waldau patented head-cock reaction? I would totally make a .gif of that if I knew how to make .gifs.
  
  He constantly does it! Watch for it next time.
  
   If there is ever a drinking game based on Game of Thrones, and their should be, that should be one of the moments where you take a drink: whenever Nikolaj cocks his head in the opposite direction and delivers a line, take a drink! 
  I really bought Peter Dinklage’s mixed overwhelming emotions in that scene, though. Whereas I felt Nikolaj was just acting. Doing a fine job, I guess, for a TV show, but it came off as “I feel I need to tear up in this scene to show off how I can tear up.” Dinklage’s clumsy delivery of his opening line expressed it all so much more clearly and poetically,— and originally if you ask me.
  
  Cersei is pregnant. I guess losing that baby will drive her over the edge. Ho-hum. Yes, they are going to go there. I look forward to a really disgusting miscarriage scene.
  
  Davos sagely tells Gendry: Nothing fucks you harder than time. Sounds like a slogan for a poorly thought-out beer commercial.
  
  Can’t you just see Captain McBeard aka Davos in a smokey tavern, his hand patting the finely-shaped rear of a slinky twenty-something, downing an ice cold tankard of ale, turning towards the camera and saying “(Ahhhhhh!)Nothing fucks you harder than time.” {wink} . It’s so…almost brilliant.
  
  AS for the sentiment, I can see that neither the show-runners nor McBeard have ever met ME.
  Fermented crab bit is mildly amusing though and I liked the matter-of-fact way Gendry brained those NPCs.
  
  It’s cool when Gendry kills people unexpectedly. It’s morally questionable when Daenerys does it. See?
• Back on Dragonstone. Loved the leaner/shorter bit. Jon had a Napoleon moment. They are always poking fun at actors’ looks.
• Old Town. Sam reveals that his entire sojourn at the Citadel is a wash and contributes basically nothing to the plot other than healing Jorah, who doesn’t even have the disease in the books. Any hope of light being shed on what is going to happen at Oldtown is absolutely trashed by Season 7. They plainly don’t know or have cut it out. And that maester is NOT Marwyn. I do see that they casually dropped the “Ragger annullment” announcement. And Sam was too stupid to get it.

Now the end bit: Eastwatch: finally. So we suddenly get, like, a sort of dirtier, more foul-mouthed Fellowship of the Ring thing. I have long hoped for a LOTR-style Quest beyond the Wall in the books: but will it happen? The premise of it is kind of dumb, if you ask me: capture a wight and bring him south.

In my own theories/head fan fiction/whatever I was thinking more along the lines of going north and destroying some secret source of power for the White Walkers, like…an evil snowball or…you know…The Ancient Jewel of Brandon the Builder, or I don’t know something like that. OK, that is a little too Tolkien-y. Or destroying the “Queen Bee” of the Others, say.

I even thought maybe the quest might include Hodor-with-Bran piggybacking in his brain. And definitely Ghost! Or Summer.

Anyway.

I question if this quest is even going to happen in the books this way. The idea just seems too dumb for GRRM.

I mean, Beric Dondarrion being there is throwing me, too. What the heck? He is gone in the books. Why include him at all? He is so relatively unimportant. I know that Lady Stoneheart is not going on this quest. At this point I think we can confidently say the books and the show have diverged in ways we never dreamt of. Maybe Lem Lemoncloak will do it in the books.

Still, if I forget the books, and ignore the fact that the object of the Quest is stupid, it was a stirring moment seeing the Seven Questers (it would be Seven, that sounds right) set off into the Great White and I felt something in the plot click.

I also found Jon’s “we’re breathing” line to be…surprisingly right.

My guess is that they will not be successful, but maybe it will lead them to other interesting places.

1.6k Views · 29 Upvotes

Game of Thrones: Season 7, episode 5: What is the significance of the scroll which Littlefinger hid and which Arya found?

Littlefinger is, basically, what my mother used to call a shit-distributor.

Littlefinger's goal, of course,  is to drive a wedge between Sansa and her siblings; and then use that distrust to manipulate Sansa into staging a coup and taking over Winterfell.

(For the record, if you didn't pause the play on your illegally downloaded episode of Eastwatch, like I did you might have missed the fact that the scroll which the maester brought Littlefinger was the letter that Sansa wrote in Season 1 under Cersei's orders, asking Robb to bend the knee and submit to the Lannisters because Ned Stark was a traitor. )

Now, We have already seen tension between her and Jon.

But there are some details that are easy to miss in episode 5 that give clues as to what is really going on.

Here is what happened:

1. Sansa holds a large — and blessedly Lyanna Mormont-free — council. Many of her lords seem very unhappy with Jon’s absence. Glover and Bronze Yohn Royce are particularly vociferous in their objections. Glover flat out states: We did not choose you(Sansa); but perhaps we should have. Royce says: The Knights of the Vale came here for you, Lady Stark.
2. Lady Stark stays the course.
3. Later Arya confronts Sansa and accuses of her trying to usurp Jon’s chair. Arya is QUITE unreasonable; Sansa is very smart and political.
4. Arya sees Littlefinger collecting information from a serving wench; and consulting with Royce and Glover.
5. Littlefinger sees Arya spying on him but pretends not too.
6. Littlefinger gets the raven-scroll and hides it, knowing that Arya is watching him and will go into his chamber and find it, thus cementing her distrust of Sansa..

Now he thinks that Arya is going to move against Sansa; and that he can manipulate Sansa into getting rid of Arya: who is a scary badass assassin, utterly loyal to Jon. And who already just naturally doesn’t get along with Sansa; and who Sansa is kind of freaked out by.

It was by far the most interesting set of scenes in the episode if you ask me.

Of course his plan will backfire. Either Arya (and possibly Sansa) are already on to him or will be soon; or because Bran will see what’s happening and do something useful instead of just seeing the Army of the Dead coming, which everybody already knows, and tell them.

Then Littlefinger will be, in the words of Davos, “fooked.”

Game of Thrones: episode 7: Why is Dany reluctant for Jon Snow to leave Dragonstone?

Dany is lonely.

Suddenly this guy, who is super good looking, honest and actually doesn’t tower over her rather small frame; who treats her like an equal, says what he thinks without kowtowing and who obviously has chemistry with her shows up; and now is leaving — into danger. Taking along a handful of her men, including dreamy older guy Jorah and good ole Captain McBeard.

Leaving Dany behind with Tyrion the Dwarf and Varys the Eunuch and Missandei the Humorless Linguist.

Tyrion will lecture her, Varys will tut-tut and recite derivative poetry and sigh and Missandei will bore her shitless talking about Grey Worm going south.

She’s stuck on a charcoal grey island in a charcoal grey sea under a charcoal grey sky, wearing a charcoal grey dress that brings out her baby blue eyes and no one is there to appreciate that.

What is it like to travel on a holiday in Montenegro?

It was great!

I’ve just spent ten days in Montenegro, in two completely different regions of the country and I found it a fascinating experience overall.

First of all I came by car via Serbia over the mountains, so I can’t speak to the airports or anything.

I had never traveled in either country and there were a lot of similarities between the two.

The Serb/Montenegrin border we crossed at, which is located in a mountain pass, was pretty dead on the day we came over. There were no cars waiting. The bored looking guards at the border laconically stamped our passports and we entered. Having spent four hours the day before in a long queue at the Hungarian-Serb border, in 36 degree weather, this came as a great relief.

It was a bit rainy the day we we came in, which was also a relief after the dry heat of the day before. We stopped at a small pub up in the restaurants and ordered something to eat.

The menu was very limited: they seemed to mostly offer eggs with meat: ham, or bacon or these small little sausage links. I ordered the sausage links, a local specialty, which were delicious. The toilet in the place (and indeed in most of the places we visited in Montenegro) were adequately cleaned and well-stocked. The service was adequate.

The country in many ways is still not fully developed. Coming from the Czech Republic, it seemed like going back fifteen or twenty years back in time.

Public areas and many gardens were extremely weedy; many homes are plainly not finished, consisting of unpainted blocks without insulation or facade. Some of them are lived in; others seem completely abandoned.

More than a few houses seemed to have been destroyed long ago by fire or other calamity. Long houses with roofs caved in.

There were a lot of barns and some of them, frankly, looked in better condition than the houses, if no other reason that you expect a barn to look rustic and dilapidated.

Even in the town we stayed in, which is a tourist centre, there was a shabby, dishevelled appearance about the place — weeds everywhere.

Some of the buildings were almost fine but there was a lack of attention to detail that you often see in Eastern Europe: and there were a lot of unfinished houses; or houses made with untreated, unpainted and quickly rotting wood. Having travelled through south-western Serbia on the same day, which was much the same it made for a slightly disturbing first impression. There was one house in particular that we drove by every day on the way to our cabin up on a mountain meadow. It was a huge mansion of a house that seemed to have been put together in the most shabby manner imaginable and painted a hideous garish green — on one side. the other sides were simply bare concrete.

AS we drove past on the first day, a ravishing girl in short shorts lazily observed us from the first floor balcony, which, like many balconies I saw there, did not have any sort of a guard rail.

These pictures hardly do justice to the sheet imposition of the building, the awesome weight of dread that it imparts: it is simply huge and, located as it is a good twenty feet over the road, it simply looms. Next to it(unpictured) is a series of unfinished garages in naked crumbling brick, filled with rubble and with a fading “Na prodeje”(For Sale) sign draped across it.

I asked my wife, who is Czech, if the Czech Republic had been so shabby-looking when she was growing up. Because I dimly remembered it being shabbier than it is now when I first moved here in 2003.

She said that she supposed it had — it had certainly been shabbier than it was now; but it was hard to compare because when growing up she hadn’t had had anything to compare it to to she hadn’t thought of it as shabby.

We reflected that the Czech Republic probably appears shabby to visitors from say, Western Germany, or parts of America; and I remembered with a little shame how run down some rural parts of the US had looked the summer before on our massive 10 000 km roadtrip through the States.

Still this was on a different level: at first it was quite unpleasant to see. As an American, looking through American eyes, one always sees crumbling, shoddily constructed homes homes and interprets them as being indicative of danger. Indeed, that is what it would mean in the USA.

AS always in Europe, though looks are deceiving. In fact, the violent crime rate in Montenegro is quite low. You have to remind youself that the country is still coming out of a messed up bit of history: when communism fell and Yugoslavia dissolved into a civil war.

In the end, all this was probably for me the most fascinating experience of the trip. I took many pictures of these buildings in both Montenegro and Serbia and I would have liked to take hundreds more. Not only unfinished houses, but communist-built buildings are always kind of fascinating to me: they are always so monstrously ugly and yet there they are: part of the psychological landscape for decades.

In the Czech Republic they are usually painted and maintained well-enough that they approach a facsimile of attractiveness or at least tidiness; down in the Balkans they are still in their natural, pure state, smudged, dirty, with mis-matched windows and uneven looking construction: draped with clothes lines, cigarette smoke snaking from every balcony.

They fascinate me.

I’ve never seen a more beautiful-ugly-eerie sight than the towering blocks of Belgrade under heavy clouds, lit by shafts of sunlight: frowning canyons of grim concrete: yet you know that in the city people live their lives; create art; go to discos; babies are born and men woo women with flowers. You know there are historical parts of the city which have survived the centuries in beauty and grace.

The inhuman architecture Kruschev so loved, deliberately futuristic and void of all individuality seems to claim that human beings are nothing but carbon-based units serving the greater good: but you know they never erase humanity.

It will be interesting to go back there in a decade and see how the face of the country has changed.

Because you do get the impression that Montenegro is changing.

Montenegro joined NATO earlier this year, and the stakes were high enough that Putin’s Russia attempted an assassination and a coup d’etat to keep it from happening. It seems reasonable that Montenegro will eventually join its fellow Yugoslav countries Croatia and Slovenia in the EU.

And when I say it is not fully developed, I ought to point out that water is drinkable and I never once worried about food or anything. And it is safe.its not undeveloped. Its just not quite finished.

It’s also worth pointing out that the warm climate makes for some delicious locally grown tomatoes and peaches, terrifically juicy and packed with flavor which can be bought at supermarkets or at the many roadside stands in the country. My mouth is watering at the thought of them now! In Central Europe the tomatoes and peaches are never really that good — the climate isn’t right and the corporatized nature of the EU ensures that the good vegetables go to bigger markets in Western Europe.

We also bought some amazingly thick home-made honey (beehives are everywhere in the Montenegrin mountains). It wasn’t particularly cheap, but natural thick honey like that is hard to find in much of the relatively corporatized and overregulated EU.

AS for the landscape, you couldn’t wish for a more beautiful countryside if you like hiking. Seriously, I have hiked in the Rockies, in the High and Low Tatras, in the Beskid Mountains, the Appallachians, the Mala Fatras in Slovakia and the Alps of Austria. Bearing in mind that I only had a few days in the Balkans, I would put the Balkans at the top of the list.

They are gorgeous: filled with wonderful, hidden mountain meadows dotted with wild strawberries and bilberries for the picking; beautiful wild flowers and butterflies; amazingly untrafficked in places; rugged, yet accessible to both the young and old: the members of our party ranged from an energetic six to a hale 75.

Walking the high mountain paths, climbing the grassy walls of secret high valleys was great exercise but you don’t have to be a professional survivalist to get through it. And the views of the lowlands were plentiful and stunning.

There are also some lovely glacial tarns that one can swim in; and the many ski-lifts attest to the fact that winter sport is a thing there.

There is also a stunning canyon, the deepest in Europe: breathtaking views. you can take a zipline over the clear and green shaded river below, soaring like a bird for over a kilometer all for a mere twenty euros.

It's also possible to go rafting on the river, but, sadly, we ran out of time and didn't get a chance to try this.

We also spent a week on the Montenegrin coast. In many ways, the architecture by the sea is different: it has that Meditterranean feeling to it, like Greece or Croatia or Italy. As in the mountains, you get the impression that it is still under development in parts: abandoned unkempt buildings next to stunning Italianate villas; some incredibly ugly Communist resorts.

The more touristed areas are probably the best looking. However, the less frequented beaches are frankly a little messy looking and slightly littered; even in the touristed areas you see the occasional glaring blemish.

however the sea, as always in the Balkans, is crystal clear and refreshing.

This was “our” beach for the week. Not quite as nice as the touristy ones, but still pleasant and uncrowded. All the heads in the water are part of my own family.

The beaches are pebbled and thus sea slippers are recommended. The beaches of Montenegro don't compare with the world class beaches of neighboring Croatia; but, again, I expect that in a decade or two the coast will be on a par with much of Croatia, although Montenegro will always be smaller and thus offer less, of course.

WE also spent a a few hours in the lovely UNESCO site of Kotor (as well as a nearby village almost as picturesque.)

There I sneaked one of the most delicious slices of pizza that I have ever had: sprinkled with a lovely parmesan-like cheese and dripping with lucious oil.

One of the things that I love about the Balkans is the mixture of Western and Eastern styles: Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity and Islam; ,the place where the Roman, Byzantine, Russian, Ottoman and Austrian-Hungarian empires meet; Latin, Greek, Slavic and Turkish cultures mixing in interesting ways.
It makes for a volatile history I suppose, but a fascinating psychological landscape.

Overall we had one negative experience and that was in our choice of eating establishments. We generally rent apartments when travelling and do our own cooking with local food; occasionally enjoying local fast food, making a point to eat at a restaurant only once or twice a week. (Which is a good deal more than we do at home.) We happened to choose badly, eating at an outdoor patio of a restaurant in the otherwise lovely old town of Budva. The food was quite highly priced compared to others (we found out later) and the quality of the cooking was very low. I spent a 110 Euros for five people; acceptable price, but the quality of the cooking was really, really low. Perhaps the cook was sick that day. To be sure, there were many restaurants that advertised much cheaper prices. I have to conclude we were simply unlucky. It was a huge disappointment.

AS I mentioned, I really feel that the face of the place is changing: I will be very surprised if Montenegro doesn’t have a commercialized, touristic gloss in the coming decades that it lacks now.

AS it is, I’m glad I visited in this time though, when Montenegro is still outside the EU and still relatively uncorporatized, when lovely girls still offer tomatoes at roadside stands in the hot sun and young, tanned boys hold out jars of hand-picked mountain berries for sale; when scoops of icecream are 50 cents and large slices of pizza, dripping with flavor, go for a mere euro fifty apiece.