CletusMusashi

But if he was able to kill two Slayers before he got the coat, obviously his warrior skills don't really require it. Writers who thought he looked handsome in it, in the other hand, apparently did require it. Season 7 often failed to differentiate between "darkness" and the "hey, just keeping it real" form of rudeness. Wood has a chip on his shoulder about the bloodsucking monster that killed his mom? Wow. What do mean you don't like people killing her and parading around in her clothes while all the alleged good guys act fine with it? I thought this was America! Even when Spike was completely evil, back in Season 2, he was perfectly capable of understanding people's emotions and adjusting his behavior accordingly. If, instead of being polite to Joyce, he had instead spent the entire visit terrorizing her, would that somehow have made him better at physically fighting Angelus? And it doesn't help that Season 7 gave us not one but actually two completely different episodes about 'Jackets of Coolness." If you're gonna make that a big theme, at least write better scripts about it. Maybe have Faith, Andrew, and Anya break into the Smithsonian and steal the actual Fonzie leather, so that Chao An or somebody can defeat the Worst Evil by punching a jukebox and saying "Ayyyy."

I really like The Hound. Pisses me off that I think you're right.

So basically, Littlefinger is Russell Hantz from "Survivor." Who played three times, making the finals on his first try, but could never win and actually did worse each time he played. First time: no votes. Second time, no one voted for him, or for the person who was on speaking terms with him. All votes went to his enemy, who was not even well liked, just to spite him. Third time, his team threw a challenge just to get rid of his conniving ass. Chaos isn't a path. It's a tool. Forgetting that chaos is just a tool means forgetting how easily it can be put back in the box and forgotten about for a few years, then used again when actually needed. You know what else is a great tool? Chainsaws. Yet I do not find myself carrying one around all day using it.

I agree. He has been clearly obsessed with his mission of vengeance for quite some time. Even when he was travelling in Essos to "see the world," it's obvious he was going through some Bruce Wayne-esque training. And playing to the crowd during that fight was important, if he wanted anyone to even care what he wanted to say about Tywin, so I even accept him taking his eyes off the Mountain, even though it led to vice versa. The only thing that really bothered me about the outcome was reducing his death to such a silly and distracting special effect. Took me from what should have been "Oh no, that's tragic," to "Hey, when did Bane move to King's Landing?"

The stab didn't really bother me. In real life, people rarely die as quickly from abdominal wounds as they do in movies and TV. It may even have been a wound that, under better circumstances, could have been treated with available medicine. Fighting through the pain to attack to Obeyn took some determination, but I've never felt that determination was something Gregor lacked. And the exertion of continuing to fight after the stab did finish him off quickly, probably by making the wound a lot worse than it was before. But the point above about the head-crushing? Yeah. That took me out of the scene. Either he's just a very, very strong man, in which case he can not crush human skulls by squeezing them, or he's some kind of super-powered ogre or something, in which case every single chop should have been going right through Oberyn's spear shaft. I put a lot of my nerdity on hold when I'm watching "Game of Thrones." Most of the battle axes being unrealistic designs? Fine. Not knowing the difference between a knife and a dagger? Who really cares? People with two-handed swords hacking at full plate armor instead of halbschwerting at weak points? At least it looks good. But people squishing heads like fruit is just stretching it too far. I think a good rule of thumb is that anything a five year old child might find unrealistic is probably taking artistic license to an unnecessary extreme. Besides giving us a shoutout to the beetle scene, was there any actual narrative advantage to the scene ending with a skull crush instead of, say, a snapped neck? Or a nice old-fashioned fatal ground-beating? They could still keep the almost-win, the hubris, even the eyeball gouging. But the time to show that level of strength in Gregor was a long time ago, if at all necessary. And, no, chopping through a horse's neck with a gigantic sword is not anywhere near equivalent. Tearing off a horses head would be closer.

Roses are red! You raped my seester! Killed her and her children! Who ordered it, meester? Roses are red and I do have a hunch it was Lord Tywin Lannister who- oh shit! Splat! Crunch!

Best version of the character ever. Heath Ledger may get honorary mention for best live-action version, but only the DCAU's Mr. J. could fly through the sky on a tree while singing "batman smells," and still be terrifying. He was funny, scary, frivolous, intense, ingenius, and batshit insane. Voice acting and gag props were always spot-on, plus he had Harley. Well, at least as far as the public was concerned, he had Harley. As far as their private lives went, I'm pretty sure he was more into Bats. He only strung Harley along because he needed a beard. And possibly because spotted hyenas are matriarchal, so she was better than he was at controlling "the babies." Although the show did a good job of giving nuanced characterizations to many villains, many more were still one-note gimmick monkeys. No such problem with Mr. J. Sometimes he would be unable to get henchmen, because everyone was terrified to work for him. Sometimes he would be investing in non-humorous normal crime, simply because he was that hard up for cash. And sometimes he would be hosting a big get-together for other major supervillains, but only because Harley was there to remember everyone's birthdays and prison release days. To the extent that an insane criminal mastermind (whose "super power" is looking like a pointy-nosed clown) slugging it out with a three hundred pound bodybuilder gymnast dressed as a bat is ever going to make sense... the character actually made sense. And this isn't coming from somebody who went into the cartoon wanting to like it. This is from an old Adam West fan who thought that a serious Batman was about as appealing as an Amish Industrial band. But The Joker won me over, even before Kevin Conroy's Batman did. Shit, even when I discovered Killer Croc and The Ventriloquist and the undisputed best version of Mr. Frieze, I never stopped thinking that they did a great job on their Joker. Here's a trick they utilized that future versions of the franchise might want to consider: "STOP KILLING BATMAN'S PRIMARY LONG-TERM ANTAGONIST AFTER THE FIRST TWO HOURS!"

I wish Arya found Nymeria again. She does. But The Hound is asleep at the time, and when he wakes up Arya herself has gone back to sleep, so all he knows is that dire wolf tastes like chicken. R.I.P. Crispynymeria... Next wish is obvious, I think. I wish Oberyn had finished off The Mountain.

I watched it again today. The fight scene is easier to deal with if you know how much of an over-the-top ending is coming. Then you just end up watching it as comedy. My brain no longer acknowledges Mountie's actual last words, because my brain is stuck hearing him as Dr. Kelso from "Scrubs." Not quite as random as it sounds, if you know your Kelso jokes. "You raped my sister, you murdered-" "Hey, what has two thumbs and doesn't CARE about your damned sister? THIS GUY!" (squish!)

Is her hair stylist a Lannister? By the way, now that Sansa's got that supervillain costume, what's her new name going to be? Ravenatrix?

OK, I've had a night to think it over, and the ending of that fight still sucks. Oberyn dies? Fine. Potentially valid narrative choice, let's see where it leads. Oberyn gets his head crushed, by hand? Exploding zanily all over the place? That's a little bit ridiculous. At least when they killed Ned, they tried to make it like a real character death. Oberyn's was more like "Dude! Wouldn't it be awesome if his head exploded?" Troma called. They want their schtick back.

Where are all the Hill tribes? In Season 1, you couldn't walk through the Vale area for five minutes without running into them. Then they got all that military equipment from Tywin, supposedly to go back there and cause trouble, and there has been no sign of their existence since then.

The fight didn't occupy as much as the episode ad I expected it to, but that's okay, because ultimately we got what we've really all been waiting two week to see: an unbelievably long speech about beetles that actually manages to do the impossible and make Peter Dinklage boring. Maybe his backup plan is he'll tell that same story again, put everybody to sleep, and escape. I guess maybe it was some kind of foreshadowing. Oberynn died because he wouldn't stop asking a violent moron that same beetle question. But, did we really need that much extrapolation to clarify for us that The Mountain was a crazy violent thug? The Mountain and The Viper were barely even in this episode. They should have called it "The Beetles and The Stones." By the way, are there now three songs in Westeros? During that belching contest at the beginning, Castamere and the Bear song were both represented, but what was that other song someone guessed? Why, yes, I did find whores belching to be more interesting than the beetle speech.

One thing that never ceases to impress me when I rewatch the old show is that The Joker, unique among the show's villains, is absolutely never funny. Everybody else gets to say some good jokes, even if they're just angrily muttered at a henchman, but they made absolutely certain that every line ever uttered by The Joker was a complete and utter dud. Now don't get me wrong. I quite enjoyed Heath Ledger and I loved Mark Hamilll, but on a show where all of the villains are funny anyway, what do you do with the official self-designated "funny guy." Answer: You make him suck! Apparently the psychosis of Cesar Romero's version stems almost entirely from the fact that he wants to be laughed at but is just completely unbelievable incapable of inspiring it.

This was the ep that originally sucked me in. I was channel flipping around and came to the "Redrum!" scene where Xander was playing around with Sid. I didn't even know what I was watching. Hell, I didn't even know if it was a TV show or a movie or what, but I did know that any time you see a ventiloquist's dummy being picked on like that people are about to start getting sliced up, so of course I stayed on that channel, and I loved it. By the time anyone even clued me in by saying "Buffy" or "slayer," I already knew I was hooked on... whatever it was.

... Shae: Camilla the Chicken Podrick: Scooter Shagga, son of Dolf: Sweetums Tywin: Sam the Eagle

I wish Catelyn Stark hadn't believed Baelish about Tyrion being the owner of the dagger the assassin used to try and kill Bran. She doesn't. Being Catelyn, she tells him so, flat out. Being Littlefinger, he immediately pulls the string that activates some kind of a Rube Goldberg device that drops a tiny anvil on her head and knocks her out. Littlefinger ties Catelyn up and carries her away to the Eyrie. Lysa immdiately flips out and makes Catelyn fly. Littelfinger makes Lysa fly, but it's too late. Cat go splat. The Cat is flat. Ned Stark drops everything and devotes the rest of his short life to a suicidal attack on the Eyrie. Meanwhile, King Joffrey Baratheon continues to rule unopposed. I wish that, instead of confronting his enemies openly and in broad daylight, Ned Stark had tried spending his nights as a caped, masked vigilante.

I agree. He's the most awesome of the bad guys. Cersei tends toward as much pettiness as planning. Roose tries, and does pretty well with the cards he's dealt, but still feels like a poor man's Tywin. Littlefinger spends all day lecturing Sansa about how clever it was of him to hide in the bushes and talk Joffrey into attacking the butcher boy. Balon's infrastructure makes no fucking sense. ("We consider farming and trade to be unmanly, but we'll happily risk our lives pirating in order to pay taxes to keep some bitter old prune in a humungous castle.") And from there it's all downhill. Ramsay, Thorne, Slynt, Hound of the Week, Melisandre, Bald Cannibal Chief... put every single third-banana villain together and maybe the entire lot of them could make the scene half as interesting as Tywin being mildly sarcastic to someone. It's not just that he's well written. It's not just that he's well acted. it's that the good acting so often focuses on restraint, charisma, and/or a degree of pragmatism that often makes him the one who appears to be playing "good cop." So then, when he turns around and shows that, no, he has not suddenly turned into Mr. Nice Guy, I may not be surprised intellectually, but on an emotional level... yeah, kinda. Every time the thought crosses anyone's mind that maybe, just maybe, if there was some kind of do-over, maybe Tywin would not have Tyrion's wife gang-raped by Lannister soldiers... it's like Charlie Brown trying to kick that stupid football. You want proof of how brilliantly evil Tywin is? He named his most interesting kid Tyrion. So that, just in case someday there was some kind of story about the Lannisters, we would all constantly be typing things like "I think Tywin was a very cruel father to Tywin-" and then having to go back and correct it, over and over and over. I mean, that kind of torture takes way more thought than just killing a pet or chopping a dick off. The man's a fucking artist.

Hey, I was sweeping up my apartment, and all of a sudden out of the blue it hit me. The reason why he sometimes uses that Batman voice? He's getting ready to fight crime with Robin.

Person A makes a wish. Person B, defined as the first other person to answer, grants the wish, in a terrible way. Then they make their own wish. Then, anyone else (you cannot "grant" your own wish,) continues the cycle by corrupting that wish and making a new one. Once in a while, you get such an oddball wish that simply writing anything about it qualifies. Those tend to be the funniest ones, actually. But, at least to start out, the core template of the game is corrupt and wish, corrupt and wish, corrupt and wish, ad infinitum. Example. Let's say I open with: "I wish Shae had never gone to King's Landing." You might see something like this: "I wish Shae had never gone to King's Landing. Wish granted! But without her, Tyrion gets so horny that he ends up impregnating a drunken Cersei, who gives birth to octo-Joffries! I wish Jaime had gotten a cool pirate hook instead of a golden hand." "I wish Jaime had gotten a cool pirate hook instead of a golden hand. Wish granted! Jaime is given a hook for a hand, sent back to Casterly Rock, and appointed Master of Guestcoats. I wish..." well, I've got to save some for the actual game, right? Okay, here we go for real: I wish that Ser Davos' financial plan had been something more exciting than a loan application.

Either that, or seducing someone (either sex,) in the casting department, in order to get them to replace the Mountain's actor with a smaller one. Perhaps Gilbert Gottfried.

At this point, I'm pretty much assuming that Littlefinger was the one behind the hunting accident. He just hasn't confessed it to Sansa yet, but give him another week and I'm sure he will. He also killed Tywin's wife, gave Hodor aphasia, inserted the stick into Stannis' butt, and made Hot Pie fat.

Historically, two weapon combos weren't really a successful thing. Rapier fighters would often keep a dagger in their left hand in case the fight clenched up, and Miyamoto was able to show off with his two sword style simply because he was a six foot tall monster fighting little four foot eleven guys in 16th century Japan, but usually holding a weapon in two hands makes it faster, harder hitting, more secure, and allows you use one with better reach. The only thing that really proved a competitive use of the other hand was a shield. Maybe a really quick spear and shield style like Grey Worm uses? The Mountain's no stranger to spears, though. If he wasn't good at using his sword against them, he'd be dead. Granted, we've seen weapon combos used successfully on the show. Ramsay took on a whole room with hand axe and dagger, but it was a crowded room where the other guys might not have had room to use their swords properly. And Karl McRapypants held off Jon Snow's sword by using two daggers. But Karl wasn't just very experienced with daggers. He was also, much as I hate to say anything remotely flattering about him, a big, strong guy, and while Jon Snow is certainly no weakling, he doesn't seem to be known for having an abnormal amount of brute thug-power. Using a couple of one-handed weapons to block Jon Snow simply isn't the same as using them to block The Mountain. Ideally, if I were Oberyn, I would bring a mare in heat with me, just in case Gregor decided to ride. I would find out what all of Gregor's favorite toys were, buy replicas of them, and duct-tape them all over said mare. I would wear a suit of armor with twenty-foot spikes on it to keep him from reaching me. And as my primary weapon I would use a catapult. With poison. Whatever object he uses to fight with, I expect a lot of psychological warfare. Using Musashi as a historical example again, he was fond of things like showing up as late as possible for duels and being as over-the-top insulting as possible right before the fight, because he considered an enraged enemy preferable to a disciplined one. I expect similar shenanigans from Oberyn, although, let's face it, we've seen an enraged Mountain before and he still came pretty close to killing Ser Loras. Maybe just give him a whole bunch of kittens and puppies the night before? And hope that he eats so many of them that he can't move properly?

Tyrion's axe is terrible. Even for Tyrion. It has no reach, no leverage, and at the range that it actually is semi-useful, whichever edge you're not using is dangerously close to your face and neck. I always thought that if Tyrion were going to use a short double-blade weapon, it should be a short spear, with a blade at each end. With his stubby little arms, he could pull off spins with it on a crowded battlefield that specifically gave a (partial) advantage to his size. And anyway, Podrick has it. But, best weapon for Oberyn to use... It's going to be a "coming at each other from a distance" scenerio, so it needs enough reach to be competitive against a six foot long greatsword. I'm ruling out weapons that you have to swing with real muscle power, like greataxes, because a trained warrior guy the size of Mountain of the Week is always going to have better control of a long heavy weapon than a much smaller guy. I also don't think a spear is the answer. Even though there were some great spears designed for fighting guys who had armor and big fucking swords, ultimately the big fucking swords only faded because they were so much more expensive than the spears. During the era that the ahlspiess, for example, was a popular spear for killing knights in plate armor, the two-handed sword continued to be used, largely because it was a far more versatile weapon than one tends to assume. So I don't think you're really going to surprise Gregor by poking a sharp stick at him. Especially in one on one combat. Spears are most effective when you have a dozen of them stabbing at one guy on a crowded battlefield where there's no room to dodge. Swords are most effective when there's room to circle around and change which direction the fight is happening from. Modern fencing (the current rules of which are more Victorian-and-later than Renaissance,) has forgotten that. The Mountain is not a modern fencer. If Oberyn can talk The Mountain into fighting with no armor,a lot of options open up. Defeating him with a whip, for example, would be both awesome and hilarious. But that's not gonna happen. For one thing, they're very rapidly running out of seven foot tall actors, so Greg's probably going to need full visored plate armor to cover up the fact that he's suddenly a black guy or a nineteen year old ginger or the midgets from Joffrey's wedding standing on top of each other. So my vote is Oberyn uses a staff. Quick, long, with more surprising angles of attack than a sword or axe or whatever, so you can smack and jab and trip and hook and block from all over the place extremely quickly... and if multiple weapons are allowed you can always finish Mount Gregor off with a dagger. Either that,or he just goes retro, and catches him with the old "Candy-gram for Mongo!" schtick.

Futurama! Phillip J. Fry is Tyrion Lannister. Hardly a traditional hero, but tends to get pitted against very bad people and come out ahead, at least with the help of a few friends. He loves to drink, rarely fits in with those around him, tends to be despised by authority types, and has a criminal as a best friend. This means that Bender could be Bron. Although The Hound is actually an even better fit. Which one would you expect to hear saying "Bite my shiny metal ass, meatbag?" Leela is Brienne of Tarth. She's a tough, capable woman who's a bit insecure about not being a size zero. Which of course means that Jaime Lannister is Zap Brannigan. And, yes, that does mean you could substitute Podrick as Fry if you are so inclined. Amy is rich, pretty, popular, and very much aware of it. Yet she's never actually let it turn her into a bad person. Amy is Margaery (insert last name of current husband here. Are they still even trying Baratheon?) Hermes is ridiculously anal retentive, but more physically capable than one would expect. Could he be anyone other than Stannis? Professor Farnsworth is an old, petty, easily distracted bumbling fool, but he is also an absolute genius, with a lifetime of experience at what he does, who can crush you if sufficiently motivated. He has elements of Pycelle, Aemon, and Walder Frey, but ultimately he is Fry's elderly relative slash abusive boss. The Professor is Tywin. Which means that Mom, the sweet old lady who the public never suspects is so brilliantly plotting so many things, is Olenna Tyrell. Yes, I do kind of ship her and Tywin. And so I guess professor Wernstrom is Roose Bolton. Lrrr, Ruler of Omicron Persei 8, is Shagga. The part about him trying to get vengeance on King's landing for eating baby Hill People did not actually make it into the TV series, but I'm sure it's in the books somewhere. The Robot Devil is Littlefinger. "Ah, my ridiculously circuitous plan is one quarter complete!" Depending on who you chose as Bender, Nibbler is either Ser Pounce or The Hound. Ser Pounce is littler and cuter, but The Hound eats more chickens. Probably. Scruffy is a janitor, whose dialogue consists mostly of such information as "I'm Scruffy. A janitor." He seems to get all his work done, but he does like to sit down and take porn breaks when he can. Scruffy is Hodor. Earth President Richard M. Nixon is a card-carrying supervillain who makes absolutely no secret of being a horrible dick who despises everybody. Yet he continues to remain in power. Nixon is Balon Greyjoy. Kif is Varys. Both are bald, squishy, highly intelligent, constantly derided by others, and, instead of bones, are supported by a system of fluid-filled bladders. I'm sure that last part about Varys is in the books somewhere. And, no, I have not forgotten about Zoidberg. Dr. Zoidberg is obviously Mace Tyrell.