screamin

I agree that Dany is a good candidate for displacing Sansa as The Smartest Person I've Ever Met. But Arya hasn't actually met her yet. It would require Arya to actually speak to her and see her in action for her to decide for herself how much of her current success is due to intelligence and how much to other factors like seduction, luck, and prophetic Targaryen destiny weighing in her favor. Judging purely by reputation can't distinguish that. Myself, I agree with someone else who says Davos is the smartest. But AFAICT Arya hasn't even MET him onscreen, much less seen him at his best, in action, the way we have, so it's plausible Arya wouldn't know enough about him to put him in the running.

Not to speak for someone else, but I don't think they're saying the Watsonian view is dumb--often when you have to reach for a Doylist explanation it represents a failure in the storytelling (which the other poster thinks has happened). Nobody wants to a read a story that relies on knowing what was going on personally with the author or behind the scenes. Well, looking back at this... ...it sure SEEMS to me pretty dismissive of 'Watsonian' analysis. You HAVE to engage in some of what she calls 'Watsonian' analysis to decide if a plot issue makes sense in terms of its world before deciding NO in-world explanation is adequate, and we must resort to some Doylist explanation, like, say, the scriptwriters were going through a divorce when they wrote that. To use Watsonian analysis yourself to decide the solution IS absolutely Doylian, but then brush off anyone else's Watsonian analysis as mere 'handwaving' that you scorn to engage in yourself seems a bit unfair to me.

Ah, thank you for informing me. I really did not know what you meant by those words. I came from a fandom generation where we used the word 'fanwanking' to try to make apparent contradictions within a fandom universe make sense in the terms of that universe. I gather you've decided that's an unequivocally bad thing, given your use of "Watsonian" to equal bad and "Doylistic" to equal good. So, your "Doylistic" view of the issues in Sansa's writing would be something like, "The showrunners made Arya say Sansa was the smartest person she'd ever met when she's OBVIOUSLY not because they /are writing GRRM's future book interpretation of Sansa without bothering to include GRRM's proofs of her intelligence/think Sophie Turner's hot/whatever ulterior motive I care to attribute to them," yes? Seems to me that to decide whether Sansa is OBVIOUSLY dumber or not, you kind of HAVE to start with what you call "Watsonian" analysis - IS what Sansa did so dumb strictly in the terms of her universe that it makes no sense for Arya to call her smarter? If you do that, why is it so superior to exclude that part of your thought process from discussion and say anyone who DOES want to discuss it on those terms is nothing but a dumb 'Watsonian'? And as Smad says, the show has had contradictions since day one that have only gotten worse as the seasons go on, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to point out Sansa as a special beneficiary of them.

The writing around that particular scene can be read in two different ways. It isn't the only example on the show, nor does the phenomenon only apply to Sansa. Afraid so. It might be more useful if you explained what you specifically found wrong with the things I said, rather than throwing an uncomplimentary buzzword at it and calling it done.

Gee, I wonder if it has something to do with this: ....what...? What's your opinion about the intelligence of the people surrounding Sansa have to do with my question about the intelligence of the people surrounding Arya? We've followed Arya through seven years and two continents (as you mention). We've seen the people she met in that time, and I think it's safe to say we've gotten to know all the people SHE got to know well enough to have some opinion about their intelligence. If you think Arya's wrong about Sansa being the smartest person she met, why can't you name one person we've seen Arya meet and interact with enough to get some idea of their intelligence and say "This person X that she met in season Y is clearly smarter than Sansa, so Arya's full of shit when she says Sansa's the smartest?" Or are you saying that everyone around Arya ALSO becomes an idiot, and the showrunners did THAT to prop up Sansa too? I don't get it.

I don't see how that makes any difference to my point that SR assigned command of the Vale troops to LF, leaving LF with the power to take them away from the North if he wanted to. Some say that. Some say (full disclosure, myself among them) Sansa sent Brienne away because LF was advising her to use Brienne to intervene with Arya's increasingly scary actions, which would likely end badly for one or both. There is no conclusive on-screen proof either way. Sansa realized it when LF overplayed his hand with her, which was the reason she went to Bran for clarification in the first place. Arya of the 'I could cut your face off with this knife' scene never realized on her own that she'd been played at all. Arya can appreciate the difference, though it may not seem great.

Okay, then, as I said earlier, it should be quite easy for you to name one person Arya has met who is clearly smarter than Sansa, thus showing HOW patently ridiculous what she said is. Despite your long post, you managed to avoid doing exactly that. We're talking about Arya's point of view, here. The fact is that only ONE of the sisters ended up being totally played by that pimp. She exercised all her learned skills of stealth to sneakily 'find out' what LF was really up to, never suspecting that with all her clever stalking, lockpicking, and document stealing she was doing exactly what LF wanted her to do, down to being the only one to openly threaten the other sister's life with a knife to her face (an action that would probably horrify Jon if he'd seen it). It was the other sister who saw through the manipulation. I'd guess when Arya realized how thoroughly she'd been manipulated by LF and how far he'd got her to go without her ever realizing it, she had a rush of respect for her sister that shaped her current opinion. I don't understand this. The Lords of the Vale owe no loyalty to Sansa Stark for her own sake. We saw quite clearly that the command of the Vale forces was given to LF by Sweetrobin, and that Royce was threatened with death for objecting. Sweetrobin gave the command to LF to rescue Sansa, but it was entirely up to LF to decide what that meant. If Sansa sent LF away, he could order the Vale forces the North desperately needed to go with him.

I keep seeing this kind of misquote. Arya didn't call Sansa "the smartest person in Westeros," she called her "the smartest person I ever met." Arya hasn't met all of Westeros, and many of the people she DID meet are dead now. If one disagrees with Arya's estimate of Sansa's intelligence, it should be an easy matter to point out Arya's wrong by naming a character that Arya's met who is clearly smarter than Sansa. Yet no one I've seen so far who was deeply annoyed at Arya's praise of Sansa has done that. Instead, they misquote what Arya said to make it seem like the show has raised Sansa up ridiculously beyond her deserts ("They said she's the smartest person in Westeros! The smartest person in the WORLD!") so that they can joyously tumble her off that false pedestal that the show didn't even put her on. Seems to me that if one needs to bring Sansa down so much that one must invent a false quote that boosts her JUST to knock her down, then that might show how invested some fans are in trashing Sansa that they're willing to accept false quotes as true ones (ie, bullshit) just to facilitate the trashing.

Oooh, that IS a good theory. Now I wonder if Tyrion witnesses Beric giving his last life to someone else in a kiss and then dying. After Dany's heroic death, he then explains the procedure to Jon, who's not quite quick-thinking enough to have thought of it himself but quite willing to do it for Dany (especially if she's pregnant). Jon dies, Dany lives again, Tyrion is tried for betrayal of the Starks and the contravening of his Queen's last action in trying to save Jon, and condemned. It doesn't really satisfy me - it makes Tyrion look a martyr one more time - but it could happen.

I agree that Show Jaime does have that woobie sympathy. But the difference between the show's rendering of Book Jaime and the show's rendering of Book Tyrion is that IIRC, the show has depicted Jaime committing pretty much every major crime that he committed in the books, from Bran-tossing to sex in the cathedral next to his dead son, to threats of baby-catapulting in the aiding and abetting of the Lannister mafia. The show even ADDED some crimes that Book Jaime didn't commit, IIRC...like kinslaying his cousin to escape from imprisonment, to emphasizing undertones of rape in that cathedral sexual encounter, to being Cersei's bitch even after she drove his last child to suicide. So when Show Jaime meets his death - as he undoubtedly will - I don't think any but the most brainless woobie fan will say that it was undeserved. IMO, most viewers will be satisfied if he meets his death after doing something heroic in token of his atonement for his crimes. OTOH, the show's rendering of Book Tyrion has radically soft-pedaled or outright omitted his crimes; the retaliatory murder of Shae turned into self-defense when she attacks him with a knife, omitting completely his rape of one slave and the coercion of a patently reluctant other, as well as a plethor of lesser unsavory things. So show fans of Tyrion have an actual justification for saying that Show Tyrion IS truly noble, and that his eventual death (which I still think will happen) is therefore undeserved. So Tyrion's death will be when he gets to a cushy dirty-old-man retirement like the Frey patriarch, except without the nasty eating-your-kids-then-being-stabbed-to-death end? As someone else said, it would hardly be a cinematic ending for him on the show. And I don't think Book Tyrion, with his own crimes and his toxic, destructive self pity, deserves to have it quite that good. It IS funny, though.

I'm asking you whether you think it's monstruously unfair to say that Book Tyrion who raped a slave is a bit of a douche, not GRRM. You're not him. And you're not even citing his quote to show whether he's praising the show writers for their absolute fidelity to what he wrote of Tyrion in the books, or praising the quality of Dinklage's acting. So I don't accept your authority when you say that GRRM thinks that Show Tyrion is an absolute carbon copy of Book Tyrion, because: 1) We have already seen GRRM take public exception (more than once, IIRC) to the changes the writers have made to his books - (citation here and here), and, 2) Saying "I think Show Tyrion is NOT a douche, and GRRM says Book Tyrion = Show Tyrion, therefore I conclude that nothing either Show Tyrion or Book Tyrion does is douchey" makes absolutely no sense, logically speaking. According to GRRM, he expects the major end points of the show to more or less match what he has planned for the books, here: But in the same article, he also laments that the showrunners won't have time to adequately deal with the plot he's laid out in the few episodes that are left. Implication? There will be shortchanging of a lot of plotlines. If Show Tyrion has the same ending GRRM intended for Book Tyrion - I think the people who consider Show Tyrion to be a fundamentally noble woobie aren't going to be happy. Because Book Tyrion, despite significant redeemable qualities, also has a streak of genuine evil in his character that has manifested in some vile actions in the later books (like the afore-mentioned slave-raping), that he hasn't really paid for in karma. (If you disagree, please cite examples, not just the unsupported declaration, "GRRM says I'm right"). IMO, Book Tyrion's got some significant, painful payback coming to him in the books - and if Show Tyrion gets it for him, I think GRRM is worried that the show doesn't have enough time to explain why he deserves it - hence the hasty 'betrayal' plot point that is likely to leave us all unsatisfied.

So, you think slave-raping Book Tyrion could NEVER possibly be described as a bit of a douche - and that there's no real difference between slave-raping Book Tyrion and Show Tyrion? Yes, eye of the beholder. And I think the fact that the show-runners HAVE soft-pedaled Tyrion - by NOT having him rape a slave, by having him kill Shae in defense when she attacks him with a dagger instead of outright murdering her in retaliation for calling him 'Giant of Lannister' and sleeping with his dad, among other changes - means the showrunners are going to have to make an end that Book Tyrion entirely deserves (execution) serve a character who they've made too sympathetic to deserve it. That's why the whole 'betrayal' storyline seems so weird to us now, even though Book Tyrion seems far more likely to betray. Re the rest of your post regarding Sansa - I'd be happy to take it to her appropriate thread.

"Oh, come on, what do you mean, it's offensive?! He loves it when I make fun of the traumatic mutilation he suffered in his childhood and the condition that most men in Westeros would consider the deadliest insult! He was just kidding when he implied that he dislikes it as much as I dislike jokes about dwarfs - he can't get enough of it!" You may see Varys reveling in the insults as affectionate byplay - I see that even the whitewashing the showrunners applied to St. Tyrion hasn't covered completely his book tendency toward occasionally being a douche. Eye of the beholder, and all. I didn't see any such thing from Dany either, when she was describing what she thought of what Jaime had done and her childhood memories of lovingly planning with her brother Jaime's horrible death. Does that mean you think Dany was viciously rude to Tyrion, and doesn't care about him or his feelings in the slightest? Or maybe she's just recounting what she considers Jaime's crimes and what she considers the appropriate punishment for them in court, because Tyrion's feelings are irrelevant to discussions of Jaime's crime and punishment? I think there will be further conversation between Tyrion and Sansa, simply because they're the two most prominent characters in the crypts - they'll have to go over things. And I don't think 'politeness' means that Sansa mustn't EVER tell him the truth - and it WAS idiotic for Tyrion to trust Cersei (to put in in terms more blunt than Sansa used).

I agree with cambridgeguy that it doesn't seem plausible, especially the part about Varys - he's looked on enough horrors, including his own mutilation - this isn't likely to send him around the bend into HP Lovecraft madness.

This is a question of adjudicating public justice. Is she supposed to go easy on a man who did all the serious things she truthfully accused him of doing just to be polite to his brother? Is Tyrion's queen being rude to Tyrion for calling for the exact same thing? As for calling him an idiot - well, she told him she no longer thought of him as the smartest man she knew. It seems to me that's a pretty gentle criticism for a man who likes making eunuch jokes to eunuchs - especially since regarding Cersei, he HAD been an idiot, to put it far more bluntly than Sansa did. I do think, being the two most prominent characters to be consigned to the crypt, they WILL at some point be talking while the battle rages, even if it's just to nervously discuss whether their unconsummated marriage can be considered null and void, or need to be dissolved by the High Septon, or whether the NK's sword-stroke will make it a moot point. What I'm wondering about is the scroll that Sophie said Sansa gets. It seems to me to indicate that there won't be a general massacre in the crypt - since no one's going to be getting mail during the battle, it must be something that happens after the battle's over.

And it would be such an idiotic way to go, if so...pairing that with the showrunners' decision to make Jon and Dany responsible for getting the NK across the Wall by giving him a dragon, any success of theirs after that will look like failing upward. Though it would be funny if there was one wight who was almost certainly not given the honor of being buried in the crypts, but was undoubtedly interred nearby, is fresh enough to credibly move around, and knows the area well enough to lead the other wights of the NK's army to the crypt...undead LF. If Sophie's last scene is her facing him - well, that would be irony, of a lame sort.

"On the ANVIL!?"

True. But IMO, Ned being honorable would be consistent with either him never cheating on his wife with Jon's mother OR with Ned having cheated once with Jon's mother when he was a teenager at war, and repenting and reforming since - which was why no one felt there was anything really out of the ordinary with Jon being Ned's bastard. The fact that Ned was honorable has little bearing on whether Bran and Sam decided to make up a story to make Jon king of the IT. Now, I agree that Dany has no reason to believe that Jon is capable enough of lying well enough to put over such a story on her...she saw him tell the truth to Cersei when lying would have served them both better. But as ursula mentioned, he DID tell the North quite barefacedly that he gave up his crown to save the North, when that wasn't what happened. So at the very least, it would seem plausible that he might be prone to believing a story that isn't true if he wants to believe it badly enough - thus being prone to the manipulation of Bran and Sam. And if Dany's really feeling insecure, she might start to wonder if his whole noble renunciation of the crown for her sake was just to impress her with his unselfishness and immunity to greed for power - with the intention of softening her up and convincing her of his honesty and lack of ambition when he springs this revelation on her. Though honestly, I do agree that imagining Jon is clever enough to manage that much manipulation is a bridge too far for anyone to believe. :)

I just can't believe that the long dead in the crypt are in good enough shape to push off the heavy slabs weighing them down and start killing people - they must be nothing but bones by now. IIRC, even Ned arrived in a box much too small for anything BUT bones. And we haven't seen any walking dead without at least SOME muscle to move them. I agree that it would be horribly annoying if there were a sudden re-enactment of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video in the crypt during the battle.

I completely agree - but Danaerys has no reason to know any of that. We saw Jon and Ned's interactions, heard about their history, saw Ned in action. Dany's only known Jon a very little while, and it's unlikely he would've regurgitated his and Ned's whole life story at her, any more than she would've told him everything about her childhood with Viserys and Viserys' biography by now - because such lengthy unburdenings of intimate traumatic material aren't suitable for either getting to know a fellow monarch or for the first ecstatic weeks of falling in love. We know that Jon believes Bran and Sam because they are trustworthy - we know them as well as we know Jon - and because their story fits in perfectly with all the questions of his life as he and we experienced them. But to Dany, Bran and Sam are both strangers with a story with almost no proof and with obvious ulterior motives. Since she has an understandable bias toward believing that she IS the queen, having expended so much effort toward that end, she's IMO more likely to believe that Jon is being manipulated by an ambitious brother and a vengeful BFF and is too willing to fall for such manipulation, or even to believe that Jon might knowingly be lending himself to it (though she'd likely find it not credible that Jon could lie so convincingly). We see some of that with their last scene together. Jon tells her the truth, IMO, because he knows he's been behaving differently toward her and he wants to explain to her WHY his attitude has changed and why he's not behaving as romantically toward her as she might expect him to on their last night on earth. This explanation does not occur to Dany at all - she runs straight to the implication that Jon is the rightful king if Bran's story is true. And when she says so, he looks shocked and taken aback that she's worrying about that, as if he hadn't foreseen it at all. They're on different pages about this.

Hey, no need to convince me...but I'm not the one who's put years of her life and lost so much in singleminded pursuit of becoming queen and thus making all the pain (both the pain felt and the pain inflicted) worth it. Dany finding out that ALL of that was in pursuit of a title that wasn't hers by right - might find it too difficult to make herself believe the truth, on the sunk cost fallacy. It might be easier for her to believe that maybe Jon isn't quite the man she thought he was, and become more suspicious of him. They're still relative strangers, after all. She hasn't watched him all the years we have. And Jon won't be able to reassure her with his love that things haven't changed between them - the fact that she's his aunt will inhibit him, in a way that she won't really get (she was RAISED a Targaryen ready to marry her brother) and possibly exacerbate her suspicions. I agree that there doesn't seem to be enough time left for much plot to happen - especially with the minute-by-minute pace of the last 2 episodes.

His immediate, utter readiness to believe such slim evidence might strike her amiss. Considering how often cast members have said misleading things, it isn't too farfetched, IMO, that Emilia might say something that Dany ends up doubting.

If Jon and Dany marry, they become 'one flesh' and so technically a betrayal of the one is a betrayal of the other. While I'm not so sure as I was that Dany is pregnant, I still think it may happen - and if so, Jon wouldn't let their current partial estrangement with the news he's her nephew and the heir to the throne before her keep him from making sure no child of his is born a bastard. Such a wedding wouldn't be the joyous occasion it would have been before Jon found out he was a Targaryen - Dany will likely remain distrustful for quite a while, regardless of the political necessities that oblige a marriage, and Jon isn't likely to forget she's his aunt, as well as the fact that she distrusts his motives in telling her he's the heir. And Tyrion would observe that and think maybe it's best and safest for Dany if he finds some way to get rid of Jon. Then again, the pace is so damned slow these past couple of episodes that it's hard to imagine enough time will pass for Dany to even realize she's pregnant before almost everybody dies and the entire series is over, so maybe there's no pregnancy, wedding, or anything else.

Or make the ultimate betrayal. Probably Tyrion initially approached Bran out of curiosity, and to see if this whole seer reputation is true, and whether it can be put to use for foreign intelligence. He'd likely find Bran's view of the destined fight of NK and Azor Ahai fascinating - and possibly Bran's view of who is Azor Ahai and who is Nissa Nissa threatening to his queen. I can imagine he might also want to see just how powerful Bran's vision is and how something might be overlooked even by Bran - especially if he decides he wants Jon to be Nissa Nissa and Dany to be the Azor Ahai figure.

I think Jon is going to be the Lord of Light's most powerful intervention.