Qwiss! wrote:

They need to come up with some new story's for their battles. Its be ming as predictable as pro-wrestling. If Dany is down and out then the dragons save her, if our protagonists are losing a battle then another army swoops in to help at the last minute. That's the way all the big battles go now.

Yep. There's a predictable element to a lot of the plot movement, and not just in the action scenes. The biggest stretch so far has to be that Dany, with three dragons and an entire army of unsullied that has already defeated tens of thousands of slave masters, couldn't whip up a few hundred ship to cross the narrow sea. It's narrow! There used to be a bloody bridge over the stupid thing. You could sail back and forth with those ships and move the entire army across in less than a month.

It's not the show's fault as much as Martin's though. He always needed to keep Dany away from Westeros until the endgame commenced but he didn't do a great job inventing plausible excuses to keep her grounded in Essos.

I was sort of hoping the Starks would lose, Jon, Sansa, Tormund et al would somehow find a way to kill Ramsay anyway, and then Littlefinger would show up late. The way it played out wasn't too bad.

I humbly disagree that Ramsay was a bad villain—it was frustrating the way he was set up, but that led to the payoff.

Correct me if people disagree, but seems to me everything in Meereen, Astapor and Yunkai has always been fairly shit in the books and now the series. It's just very pallid and wan compared to the action on Westeros.

Burnwinter wrote:

Correct me if people disagree, but seems to me everything in Meereen, Astapor and Yunkai has always been fairly shit in the books and now the series. It's just very pallid and wan compared to the action on Westeros.

I think it partly has to do with Essos not having the same kind of pull. The mythology just isn't as interesting, and I found it difficult to get a sense of the size and shape of the continent. It's described as several times larger than Westeros—a northern Eurasia to Westeros's Europe if you will—but it's devoid of distinguishable environments and history. We have all this complex backstory about the Starks, Lannisters, Tullys, Boltons, Freys, Tyrells and-so-forth who shaped and upheld the feudalistic Westerosi system for over ten thousand years. Essos by comparison seems to exist mostly to answer the question "Where do Targaryens come from?"... which is a bit like answering "Where do babies come from?" by pointing at the Stork.

The only two seemingly interesting places, Asshai and the Shadow Lands, are described in passing as something mysterious full of wizardry and magic, so we obviously won't go there for help or answers because it would threaten to further derail Martin's mix of gritty realism and subtle high fantasy concepts.

Yes, yes. But were you entertained for an hour Klaus?

@[deleted] I left off a paragraph in my previous post in which I pretty much accused GRRM of not doing his historical research outside of Britain.

His Westerosi plotlines are shot through with incident from real British history whereas he gets very vague and hand-wavy when it comes to his pseudo-equivalents of Europe and Asia Minor. (Europe = fops and dandies, Asia Minor = tans, hordes, slaves and pyramids).

Qwiss! wrote:

Don't think Sansa has pledged to LF, it's just him making up for his sins I reckon.

Oh sweet innocent naive Qs, didn't you see the smug smarmy grin on him?
Don't you remember the free piece of advice he gave to Ned Stark?

Its the only thing he ever gave for free.

Well he seems to pretty much have the only army left in the north; I reckon that's payoff enough.

Biggus wrote:

Qwiss! wrote:

Don't think Sansa has pledged to LF, it's just him making up for his sins I reckon.

Oh sweet innocent naive Qs, didn't you see the smug smarmy grin on him?
Don't you remember the free piece of advice he gave to Ned Stark?

Its the only thing he ever gave for free.

jon's army is decimated, and LF has a relatively unscathed army looming near at hand. pretty good leverage for getting what he wants out of the starks

Burnwinter wrote:

@[deleted] I left off a paragraph in my previous post in which I pretty much accused GRRM of not doing his historical research outside of Britain.  

His Westerosi plotlines are shot through with incident from real British history whereas he gets very vague and hand-wavy when it comes to his pseudo-equivalents of Europe and Asia Minor. (Europe = fops and dandies, Asia Minor = tans, hordes, slaves and pyramids).

Not entirely true Burnsy, he's said he's based much on the series of Maurice Druon novels  Les Rois Maudits (the damned Kings) the French monarchy's struggle with the Templers in the 14th century, hes also plundered Suetonius' Twelve Caesars.
But you do have a point about the Eurocentricness of it all- Lord Norwichs excellent two volume History of Byzantium  is chock full of as much war/incest/intrigue/eunuchs  as you'd want.

The Westeros map is actually Britain joined to an upside down Ireland!

 But it's not logical, the east coast of Ireland is smooth because it is sheltered and the west coast is rugged because it is exposed to the Atlantic ocean.
Westeros should be the same, the coast with the narrow sea should be smooth and the Iron islands side wild and rugged.

Gazza M wrote:

Biggus wrote:

Oh sweet innocent naive Qs, didn't you see the smug smarmy grin on him?
Don't you remember the free piece of advice he gave to Ned Stark?

Its the only thing he ever gave for free.

jon's army is decimated, and LF has a relatively unscathed army looming near at hand. pretty good leverage for getting what he wants out of the starks

Yep, Sansa is going to get the Littlefinger all right,

Great episode, but the least we deserved for sitting through the rest of the turgid season. When Jon was pounding Ramsay in the face I was saying, no, stop, let Sansa do it. And then when the hounds appeared I just starting laughing.

The battle scene was fantastic. I loved the atmosphere they created of the suffocating army. Before that I laughed out loud when Jon was about to be cut down in the middle of the melee only for his assailant to be smashed by a charging horse. Was it big enough to be a destrier?

I enjoyed Grey Worm's throat slitting too, and how you could just make out Drogon in the background as the Masters were gloating. As Moriarty would say to Sherlock - "I'll make you buurrrrrn."

I'm guessing now we'll have to wait until next season to see Sam and his lovely new sword. The last episode will be about the control of Kings Landing, leaving two seasons for the fight against the White Walkers and any possible resolution over who controls the Seven Kingdoms. Dany will be shown in each episode sailing in the slowest boats in history. Ser Jorah will turn to stone very slowly. And God knows what Bran will get up to.

Hey that map is cool Biggie -0 didn't realise that at all.

When its the right way up Ireland looks like a koala bear.

Asterix wrote:

I'm guessing now we'll have to wait until next season to see Sam and his lovely new sword.

I would think we would get some sort of explanation as to why he took it. I've seen some theories floating around saying he'd make his father, one of the finest battle commanders in Westeros, come up to the Wall and see for himself the real dangers that lie on the other side. But that's a hell of a long detour when he was supposed to be going to Oldtown.

Biggus wrote:

Qwiss! wrote:

Don't think Sansa has pledged to LF, it's just him making up for his sins I reckon.

Oh sweet innocent naive Qs, didn't you see the smug smarmy grin on him?

Yeah but I've met Aiden Gillen that's a permanent feature of his face.

The greatest mayor there ever was or will be.

1. Agree with the predictable battles. It does not take away from the stunning choreography of the battle. It's the most intense battle I can think of since Saving Ryan's Privates. However, I could have written that entire episode other than Dany's offer for peace to the Masters.

2. I'm really wondering if they need two more seasons. Wouldn't they be able to wrap this story up in one very tight season? They can dispatch of fraticidal Ironborns in half an episode. Dany needs to march on Kings Landing and get it done. Unfortunately, I cannot see her engaging in much meaningful dialogue on her way to the Iron Throne, so she'll just bore us with dragon cameos for two more seasons. The North can be consolidated quickly with Littlefinger's army. Only thing left is the White Walkers who, like Dany, are too powerful and don't engage in dialogue, so let's just get them fighting.

3. In what order will armies fall? we almost need to set up an NCAA March Madness-style bracket.

I think 2 seasons are necessary. The penultimate season to properly deal with the politics (Dany making it over to Westeros etc) and the final season to deal with the white walkers, however that pans out.

All depends on what they do with the story.

I for one hope they think about doing the big fire versus ice conflict and take a massive zigzag away from it. They need to do something really different from that.