I thought that was just a misunderstanding, at least on Hodor's part. An interviewer asked him who wasn't returning in Season 5, and he replied ...
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Well, Bran's and Hodor's story is way ahead of the other ongoing stories, and have pretty much run out of book at this point, so I wouldn't be surprised if they sat out a season or two waiting for the other stories to catch up.
"Everybody killed everybody, in Winterfell, Harrenhall, The Aerie, King's Landing, The Twins, Riverrun, and Dorne, with the Axe, the Halberd, the Valyrian Steel sword, the Mace, and the Poison." I win!
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
The new season has started. I guess it was inevitable what with the slowness of Martin's writing and the speed of the show that shortcuts and laziness and plain making up shit as they go was bound to happen. Deviations from source material were also inevitable. But what I think no one expected was something so, uh, stark.
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Originally Posted by The Man
I can't remember if Jeyne/Fake Arya has been introduced yet but she's in for just as much agony at Ramsay's hands as Theon is.
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Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites
[spoiler]I do not give a shit about Theon Greyjoy.
So listen, writers, and listen GRRM: I get it. Ramsay is evil. He does evil things. A lot. For a long time. But I give not one shit as to the fate of Ramsay. I give even less to the fate of Theon. They are both despicable people, only now one tortures the other. Why am I supposed to have any interest in this?
Because the writers are lazy or whatever, they've completely eliminated Jeyne Poole from the show. Instead they've swapped Fake Arya for Real Sansa. In a move that makes no sense to the internal universe, Littlefinger lets go of the last Stark he's been creepin' on and gives her to Bolton.
But so far the rest of what happens to Jeyne happens to Sansa.
Sorry, chunks. You get the worst of all worlds. More Ramsey. More Theon. And more torture and rape. Congratulations, I guess.
As has been stated before, it's completely unnecessary to continue telling us what a horrible person Bolton is. It doesn't need to happen to Jeyne Poole, a character we never get to know. It doesn't need to happen to a character we do know. It doesn't need to happen.IT DOESN'T NEED TO KEEP HAPPENING.WE FUCKING GET IT. THIS IS A TERRIBLE UNIVERSE POPULATED BY TERRIBLE PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO QUALMS WITH DOING TERRIBLE THINGS.
I've only started watching recently, first with Comcast's free HBO on-demand week before this season started, and since with my sister's log-in. I just watched the last episode of season four yesterday. But when I heard so many complaints about this week I told her to give me spoilers. I have come to a simple, inevitable conclusion. There is one thing I want from this show more than anything else in the world.
I want Ramsey Bolton to get a COCK PUNCH FROM JAMIE'S METAL HAND!
Is that too much to ask?
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
In a move that makes no sense to the internal universe, Littlefinger lets go of the last Stark he's been creepin' on and gives her to Bolton.
What???
Okay, I probably shouldn't have read that. I don't have cable, and so I have to wait 'til it's out on blu-ray before I see each season. As such, I've seen Seasons 1 - 4, and won't be seeing Season 5 for awhile.
I didn't like Sansa at all during the first 2 seasons. Basically, because she was an idiot. "But Daddy, so what if Joffrey is a vicious, murderous, cowardly, power-hungry psychopath? I wuuuv him, and I want to make babies with him -- and I want to be his Queen."
Finally, sometime during Season 3, I found myself beginning to actually like her. Partly because she's perhaps the most decent person in King's Landing, and partly because she finally began to demonstrate that she has at least some learning ability and thus is not a complete idiot.
By the end of Season 4, I was all "I hope you go all Arya on Littlefinger when you finally discover that he's directly or indirectly responsible for virtually every awful thing that has happened to your family."
But Littlefinger -- who, from everything that we've seen about him up until this point would never do such a thing -- hands her over to friggin' Bolton? [The only explanation I can think of that makes any sense at all would be if Sansa slips up somehow and reveals to Littlefinger that she knows about his foul deeds and is planning a suitably lengthy and painful revenge.]
Okay, at this point I want Arya, Jon Snow*, Sam, Daenerys, Tyrion, and Brienne -- oh, and maybe Bran and Meera -- to team up and basically wipe out pretty-much everybody else in Westeros.
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As has been stated before, it's completely unnecessary to continue telling us what a horrible person Bolton is. It doesn't need to happen to Jeyne Poole, a character we never get to know. It doesn't need to happen to a character we do know. It doesn't need to happen.IT DOESN'T NEED TO KEEP HAPPENING.WE FUCKING GET IT. THIS IS A TERRIBLE UNIVERSE POPULATED BY TERRIBLE PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO QUALMS WITH DOING TERRIBLE THINGS.
QFT.
*I keep reading about how "boring" Jon Snow is, and I'm not quite certain why that is. Speaking for myself, he's one of my favorite characters. I know he isn't flashy or particularly witty -- but he's probably the most decent person in the show. Unlike his father and brother Robb, he isn't so rigid in his thinking that he's unable to recognize the bigger picture. And while he is indeed an honorable man, he isn't an idiot about it -- that is, he isn't so blinded by his father's and brother's "Honor Before Reason" mentality that he can't recognize a villain when he sees one, and he's perfectly capable of understanding that sometimes the right thing to do isn't the "honorable" thing to do.
Maybe it says something about me, but I rather enjoy seeing how Jon struggles to maintain his ideals -- even as he's learning to accept the fact that as honorable [in almost all matters] as his father might have been, that utterly rigid and ridiculously naive mindset doesn't work too well in the real world.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
I don't really get the Jon Snow hate either. The people complaining seem to latch onto his facial expressions and consider him "emo." Whatever. If he constantly held forth at length about his precious feelings, I would get it, but he really doesn't.
I've been slogging through A Dance With Dragons on and off, because I don't particularly like it but I'm too stubborn to give up on it, and so I'm up on the Jayne Poole subplot. I'm really, really REALLY hoping that conflating Sansa with fake-Arya is for a better reason than either 1) streamlining the story by reducing cast size, or 2) just mixing it up for the sake of mixing it up. Because while I understand 1), and have wholeheartedly supported it in the past, this particular streamlining will have a huge ripple effect on several storylines, doing the precise opposite of simplifying things. I suspect 2) just because I've lost some confidence in the show poohbahs over the past 1.5 seasons. At least the wedding night scene, horrid as it was, wasn't quite as disgusting as it was in the book.
I am glad that they've either eliminated or at least delayed the Sam-Goes-To-Oldtown subplot. IMO it's one of those things in the books that just bogs down the story with dead weight. I was, however, mildly disappointed that Sam's machinations in getting Jon elected were reduced to a single 20-odd-second speech. I thought that was an important character development moment for him. Oh well. Simplifying Tyrion's journey and apparently removing the Cousin Targaryen subplot was a good choice as well, I thought. That was giving me fits in the book, smacking of pointless filler.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
As has been stated before, it's completely unnecessary to continue telling us what a horrible person Bolton is. It doesn't need to happen to Jeyne Poole, a character we never get to know. It doesn't need to happen to a character we do know. It doesn't need to happen.IT DOESN'T NEED TO KEEP HAPPENING.WE FUCKING GET IT. THIS IS A TERRIBLE UNIVERSE POPULATED BY TERRIBLE PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO QUALMS WITH DOING TERRIBLE THINGS.
I tend to agree. There have been far shittier scenes in the show in both how horrific the action was and in how the makers of the show handled it. Jaime's rape of Cersei was far more problematic in that it's not even acknowledged as being horrible by the show at all.
Maybe you have a problem with how the scene was portrayed. But it wasn't particularly explicit compared to similar scenes. They could have just implied or described it later, of course. Or cut out a bit sooner.
But having it not happen at all? Given that the changes in the plot have led Sansa to marry Ramsay, what other conclusion is there? Ramsay decides to not be a sadistic psychopath? Sansa or Theon murders Ramsay and then they're both promptly killed by Roose Bolton or his men? And while Sansa has certainly learned a lot since the early seasons, she's not Arya, we haven't seen her kill anyone else. It would be a big turning point for her... And then what, she's going to have a whole escape from the Boltons planned out? She's a mastermind now? There was no way Sansa was escaping this plotline unscathed.
I'm skeptical that the showrunners know what they're doing with all these changes, of course. And if that's just the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of your ability to handle the violence the show dishes out, and you're giving, say, Oberon's death and Theon's torture as reasons as well, then ok. But that they didn't decide to spare Sansa that treatment once they went down that road... I don't see why you should expect it to go any other way.
The Sansa for Jeyne Poole swap is definitely to keep cast size down, and we haven't seen Jeyne prior to this so the introduction of a new character at this point would be a bit confusing. For the Bolton's this change is a boon, as the fake Arya plot never would have worked for long. I suspect this change is also to help endear us to Theon's eventual redemption, not that I give a rats ass about Theon at this point. His betrayal of Rob puts him on the same footing as Walder Frey IMO, both nonredeemable at this point.
As far as Littlegfinger handy Sansa over to the Bolton's, in the context of the books it makes no sense. In the series I think it is part of his bigger plot. Recall his conversation with Sansa in the Eerie where she asks him want he wants? Littlefinger replies "Everything". He is playing all sides against each other. I think his grand plan is to have the Bolton's and Stannis kill each other, or at least be weakened enough that the Lannister's finish them off. He'll "rescue" Sansa and marry her (pissing off Cersi in the process). He's hoping to rally the North behind him through Sansa and thus pose a serious threat to the south. He literally wants everything.
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But that they didn't decide to spare Sansa that treatment once they went down that road... I don't see why you should expect it to go any other way.
I suppose there was maybe one way to mitigate it, but it wouldn't be plausible for it to spare Sansa from everything horrible.
And that is for Roose to really get on Ramsay's ass about how he can't be doing fucked up shit to Sansa. And yeah, he's said something along those lines to Ramsay, but not as harsh as he could be. It's also not quite clear that Roose realizes how fucked up Ramsay is (it's also not quite clear how much Roose cares). I suppose Theon should be pretty clear evidence...
But even so... does that get Sansa out of that particular scenario? Theon's not going to snitch, and Roose certainly won't say there was anything wrong with Ramsay having sex with his wife. Marital rape is not a thing he would care about. He might say something about forcing Theon to watch... if he found out about it.
Roose might be able to prevent Ramsay from physically abusing Sansa by, say, cutting, whipping or beating her, but Ramsay will psychologically abuse her no matter what Roose says.
The whole Brienne storyline this season is also a change from the books though. So who knows how this will all play out. And with Stannis marching south, Ramsay won't have long to torture Sansa unimpeded. So I guess you can take comfort that way?
Which also has spoilers, but I think only through A Storm of Swords / season 4.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
I really want to obsess over all the things, but how long is decent to go before you have to spoiler-tag this thing to bits? The UK gets season 6 episode 2 tonight.
I just finished the story The Hedge Knight which is set in the same world of Game of Thrones but about 100 years earlier. So there's still a Targaryen in power but there are no longer dragons. It was pretty good.
I have a general complaint about the show this season. I think the tits to dragons ratio is way, way off. I understand that dragons are more expensive than tits, but THAT'S WHY I WANT TO SEE THEM. Tits I can get anywhere, I come to Game of Thrones for dragons. Also
NO! Arya cannot kill Phryne Fisher. I won't have it! That girl had better quit assassin training before that goes down.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette