HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

Wait the giants name really is Wun Wun? I thought someone was making some Star Wars joke :/

BTW I just found out that theguy whose in the giant's costume is one of the actors who played the mountain lol

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Wun_Weg_Wun_Dar_Wun

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/images/thumb/b/bf/Wun_Wun.jpg/411px-Wun_Wun.jpg

Wun Wun is named after Phil Simms, a quarterback for the New York Giants who wore #11.

^^ Uncanny resemblance.

the books are completely filled up with nfl references, it's really ridiculous

why didn't the giant throw rocks or logs or something at Ramsay's dudes? I was 90% good with the battle, but they really made crappy tactical use of the giant.

Yah it seemed like he shd have been able to stomp on some heads more.

What I didn't get about the arrow shooting was why Ramsay was just shooting arrows by himself. If all of the archers shoot at once they probably kill Rickon, Jon and Jon's horse right at the beginning of the battle.

― silverfish, Wednesday, June 22, 2016 7:13 AM (14 hours ago)

Did you miss Sansa's speech to Jon about what Ramsay was like? How he liked to play sadistic games and just generally fuck with people?

xp
I was wondering during that why why they had never thought to make Wun Wun a 20 foot sword.

The Sansa theories are kind of baffling to me since a) it's not like the sudden appearance of the cavalry is something that is usually explained in painstaking detail in stories like this, b) they managed to pull it off as a wow-moment even though everyone (?) was aware that this was probably how it was going to turn out, and c) you don't really need to speculate too much about how and why it happened like this since it's within the realm of normal behavior. Sansa insulted LF and so didn't tell anyone when she desperately turned to him for help later, not knowing if he would come or not, or in time. He came, in time. There will be a price to pay for it. That's basically all you need to know.

That's also why this is different from the Arya story, which was mostly just bad writing and directing, with Arya behaving like a moron strolling around Bravos a whistling a French Montana tune, then getting ambushed by a trained killer who gleefully twists her knife in her gut. Arya should have been dead, or she was not Arya, and so the speculations started rolling. The LF rescue is pretty straightforward and the discussions about why Ramsay would shoot someone else before he shot Jon Snow seem merely pointless. He did and it might have been stupid of him, but that's just a given. Even smart people sometimes do stupid things.

They did not pull it off as a wow-moment. Not to me, not to many. The weird details about it were a big reason.

Idk about «many». Some people were not impressed, true, but their reasonable reasons for not being so still elude med.

sansa arrived with the vale army. she must have had some advance knowledge of where they were and when to be able to meet up with them. from her POV they did not just show up, and some amount of communication is implied since her first letter is implied. so she knew the extra force was coming and did not tell jon which could've influenced battle tactics and crucially timing. with this decision she gambled thousands of lives and risked the outcome of the battle itself. putting aside her reasons for doing that for a moment, the first is kind of defensible if she is actually become lifflefinger 2.0 which would be a sad development but reasonable; the second does not make any sense because it is a death sentence for her, she will kill herself if they lose. so regardless of motivation the decision is implausible. in terms of motivation, the only thing she can possibly gain from the decision is that, if that battle is won, it will be her victory rather than jon's. any of the other lame justifications people have shit onto this thread are totally immaterial in the context of the stakes. so the choice imo is you believe that sansa has gone full LF and risked thousands of lives including her own, and her line, and her home, to come out of things ahead of her half brother, or you think that ppl who made a tv show thought it would be cool if the battle was rescued at the last minute by another force arriving, for the 100th time.

idk i am ashamed of having written this, i do think it was a lame and tired set piece for its own sake and not at all narratively justifiable but i still enjoyed it, who cares. the thread getting clogged up with ppl who have apparently paid no attention and like deej calling other ppl dumb because he doesn't have a clue himself...i am the real victim here.

The fact that Sansa appeared with LF doesn't really tell us that she knew they were coming. It mostly just tells us that the show didn't bother to show us how they met up because it ultimately didn't matter. She didn't participate in the fight, and so her perspective was different from that of the viewers. We only know she sent a letter by raven and that LF came when he was called. Her rejection of LF the last time they met made it clear that he didn't have to, but he did anyway, for his own reasons. Everything else is speculation.

As far as the events off screen leading up to Sansa's arrival with the Vale... isn't it plausible to say that she was hanging out in base camp, the army shows up with LF, she says "they're fighting right now! quick!"- cut to them charging straight into the battlefield?

you know what i bet we'll probably found out how/why LF showed up in a few days

As far as the events off screen leading up to Sansa's arrival with the Vale... isn't it plausible to say that she was hanging out in base camp, the army shows up with LF, she says "they're fighting right now! quick!"- cut to them charging straight into the battlefield?

― Evan, Thursday, June 23, 2016 2:46 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's the simplest solution! She's hanging out at base camp contemplating suicide rather than risking that Ramsay takes her as his prisoner at the battle.

Nitpicking Ramsey's choice to shoot Wun Wun instead of Jon is weird, since a) we know Ramsey is a cruel motherfucker and killing the Giant in front of Jon is something he'd get off on and b) killing Jon would not have done him any good--his army was defeated and the gate breached. If he killed Jon he would just be torn apart by Jon's men. At least by keeping Jon, with his sense of honor and whatnot, alive he had a chance to live on as a prisoner--and probably would have if Sansa hadn't gotten to him.

Also, how often do you get to kill a giant?

why would littlefinger not send a message in reply to sansa's message? why is it plausible that his army would stumble across the base camp rather than the big battle with their side being massacred? such bizarre, needless contortions.

We see her sending a raven. We do not see her receiving a raven. That's what we know.

l feel the need to clarify that my problem with the show is not a few implausible moments or sketchy character motivations--i can live with those things to a degree, and every show has them--it's that almost without fail those lapses feel totally false even in the moment and not just when thinking about it later. it's totally possible to work your way backwards from just about anything that happens to make it "logical" (and most the explaining here is not accomplishing that for me) but there's no way to make it dramatically interesting in a lot of these cases. there are too many cheap "emotional" effects strung together in an almost mechanical fashion.

Obviously Bran warged into LF's return raven and sent it off course. He also warged into Rickon and made him run in a straight line. Why? Heel turn.

put another way, the seams show so clearly on this show simply because the drama is so inert.

That's not my issue. With so much at stake why not tell Jon - it's not just his like at risk, but maybe her position in the north. If littlefinger's involvement is in question, maybe Jon could help tip the balance? If it's certain, why not shore up her position by telling him and delaying the battle?

post your wun wun fan fic here

showing up at the last minute after Jon's forces have been markedly reduced definitely serves LF's ends more than anyone else's. if sansa told him about it, he might have deliberately shown up at the last minute -- he saves the day, Sansa/Jon owe him, and he takes no/few losses

I understand it dramatically, of course, by the show itself encourages a degree of nitpicky geekery.

He also mentions Bill Belichick in Dance with Dragons:
"...the fourth and final volume of The Life of the Triarch Belicho, a famous Volantene patriot whose unbroken succession of conquests and triumphs ended rather abruptly when he was eaten by giants."
This is referring to the New England Patriots' 2007 season, in which the Patriots went undefeated until losing in the Super Bowl to the New York Giants.

jfc

Obviously Bran warged into LF's return raven and sent it off course.

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Clearly Bran was too busy altering things in the past to waste time warging into birds. I mean, come on.

l feel the need to clarify that my problem with the show is not a few implausible moments or sketchy character motivations--i can live with those things to a degree, and every show has them--it's that almost without fail those lapses feel totally false even in the moment and not just when thinking about it later. it's totally possible to work your way backwards from just about anything that happens to make it "logical" (and most the explaining here is not accomplishing that for me) but there's no way to make it dramatically interesting in a lot of these cases. there are too many cheap "emotional" effects strung together in an almost mechanical fashion.

― ryan, Thursday, June 23, 2016 10:24 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

otm

think ramsay's death disappointed me because it was a little too conventionally poetically just - you know GRRM is for sure going to have something different cooked up for him, even if it ends up being lame in another way

i felt like jon snow punching him to death might have been enough.

tho ideally he'd have done that over his entire body, moving around and focussing on a different part until he had formed a resultant paste.

a final face-off between stone man jorah and paste man ramsay would be something to behold

would be cool if ramsay was like a 2d paper cutout after jon was finished with him.

the writers on this show have no imagination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSTL3AidX4o

Longneck otm

That's not my issue. With so much at stake why not tell Jon - it's not just his like at risk, but maybe her position in the north. If littlefinger's involvement is in question, maybe Jon could help tip the balance? If it's certain, why not shore up her position by telling him and delaying the battle?

― inside, skeletons are always inside, that's obvious. (dowd), Thursday, June 23, 2016 9:47 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because she doesn't know? This doesn't even seem like a nitpick it feels like you getting emotionally involved in the battle outcome and deciding that Sansa was Bad

Questionable assertion no 1
she must have had some advance knowledge of where they were and when to be able to meet up with them

Questionable assertion no 2, where the word "so" does an an insane amount of heavy lifting:
m. from her POV they did not just show up, and some amount of communication is implied since her first letter is implied. so she knew the extra force was coming and did not tell jon which could've influenced battle tactics and crucially timing.

I won't get to see the final episode until many days later, and it makes me so sad that I'll miss all this delightful nitpicking and nitpicking of the nitpicking. Sad!

The rest of that paragraph is a bunch of speculation that assumes you've drawn reasonable conclusions in those sentences which you haven't

If Sansa didn't write them, then who do you think that letter she wrote was for?

Sansa wrote to LF, the question is whether she received a reply before the battle

It's possible she had absolutely no faith in the Vale showing up at all. The thing is, they were so desperate you'd think she'd be driven to share that she asked LF for help, just to delay almost certain defeat (and therefore her suicide) by another day with their collective fingers and toes crossed that the Vale shows up. After waiting as long as they're able to, THEN they give the battle a shot anyway. Obviously they wouldn't be "allowed" to delay things but they could milk it, or Jon could have used the possible Vale intervention as leverage to threaten Ramsay and make his followers question their loyalty, which is something he is shown doing already but hinging on the "you fight for him would he fight for you" stuff. Conclusion for me is:

Narrative reason: dumb Sansa

Show reason: exciting surprise for audience just as they begin to think their heroes are surely done for

So... How did he find her if there wasn't further communication?

I would imagine he had some scouts ffs

Suspension of disbelief? Sansa shares info on where they will camp just outside of the designated battlefield? That camp happens to be en route to Winterfell?

he read the script, duh