WhiteStumbler

But were afraid to ask.

That is a very good point. As for the rest of your post, I was told there would be no math...?

There is a distinctly Terminator 2 vibe to this spec. I approve.

I think they traveled overland from the sea to Torhenns Square, and then from there to attack Winterfell, but they were far from the sea and their power-base (ships). S2E08 The Prince of Winterfell Theon: Winterfell is the heart of the North. Yara: Aye, it is, hundreds of miles from the sea. We're islanders, baby brother. Had you forgotten that? Our power comes from our ships. This leads me to believe that Winterfell is a good distance from any body of water that connects with the sea.

I believe that the abandoned windmill and the village where Ollie lived were in the general vicinity of Castle Black, but two months is way too long to travel from the windmill to Eastwatch By The Sea and the Bay of Seals, even for a small band that is trying to move stealthily. Cersei says it took Cersei, Robert, & Co. "a month" to travel from KL to Winterfell, but this is also unpossible. Yoren said that it was "A thousand leagues from (KL) to The Wall", a league is 3 miles, so, no, a wheeled cart drawn by horses is not going to cover 100 miles in a day. A highly motivated person on horseback with a string of horses might be able to get close to that, but... no. I guess we just have to accept the fact that the world contracts and expands to allow some things to happen and others to be impossible (unless Littlefinger has a Pegasus).

This has been bugging me for a while now, so I went and found the ANSWER to this apparent plot hole. From S3E08 Second Sons: (In the abandoned windmill, with a thunderstorm moving in) Bran: How are we going to get past The Wall? My uncle said it's 700 feet high. How did you get past it? Osha: Got in a boat and rowed past the Bay of Seals. Bran: It would take us two months to get to the Bay of Seals. Osha: Some climb straight up the ice. Bran: Even Hodor's not strong enough to climb The Wall with me on his back. Hodor: Hodor! Jojen: 19 castles guard The Wall. Only three are still manned. Hodor: Hodor!! Jojen: One of those abandoned fortresses will give us a way through. Bran: My uncle said the gates were sealed with ice and stone when the castles were deserted. Meera: Well, we'll have to open them up again. Later they meet up with Sam, who comes up thru the hidden sallyport in the Nightfort that he read about in an ancient text.

Correct. From earlier this season... Jon: Your people need a leader. And they need to get south of The Wall before it's too late. We don't have much time, and they have less. The Walkers are coming, and they'll hit your people first. I'm not asking you to make peace to save your skin. Make peace to save your people. Tormund: Most of them are at Hardhome. You know where that is? Jon: Up on Storrold's Point. I can give you 10 horses and nine other men. You can get there in a week. Tormund: We'll need ships. As for the name "Hardhome", maybe it translates as something less bleak in one of the Wildling languages? Place Where the Brave are Safe? Then again, we have Point No Point WA, the Bitterroot Mountains, Hungry Mother State Park, Tombstone AZ, and Dead Horse Bay NY in the US, so...

Ugh. Those zomboni kids. <shudder> I guess... thanks? :-( But the Baratheon fleet has got to be anchored *north* of The Wall, right? I thought Stannis & Co. got off the ship and rode directly to attack the Wildlings. No one (that I recall) said anything about the NW letting them through the gate, or that some dude with a hideously deformed nose wished them well at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.

I remember that scene. JS say you won't win, Ygritte says how do you know, and JS says you have lost 6x before, every northern boy knows the names of the heroes and where the battles were fought. One of the rare instances where Jon knew something and Ygritte knew nothing.

<bows> Valar Dohaeris. 'Blasting through' one of the un-garrisoned tunnels should have been the FF strategy last season, now it is sort of impossible with Stannis, the Southern King who already kicked their asses once, on the other side of The Wall. What will be interesting (to me) is: How will the gates on The Wall hold, if the weapons of the WWs shatter steel? I don't think four-inch bars of cold-rolled steel are going to be much of an impediment.

Not a continuity error. Tormund said explicitly that the Free Folk retreated to Hardhome after the greatest army the North has ever seen was cut to pieces by Stannis. Last season, Stannis probably landed just north of The Wall before attacking the FF (he didn't come thru The Wall to attack), his ships were presumably still there when Jon and Tormund sailed off to Hardhome.

Seems reasonable. I re-watched last night (up until the action shifted to Hardhome, because I want to savor that one later this week all by itself) and caught this... The woman who is Arya / Lana's first oyster customer every morning (Lara -- an apparent lady of the night who is heading home from work at dawn) was one of the women who was in the hot tub with Salladhor Saan in S4E06 "The Laws of Gods and Men". Stannis had just gotten his loan approved, and Davos found the pirate in a tub with Salladhor and two naked women. One of them was Lara. Arya is 4 degrees of Kevin Bacon from Stannis.

"Come at me, Crow"

I figured it was probably asking too much to see Tyrion and Dany in the same room together (and, even after Tyrion crawled out of his crate, I sure didn't think it would happen before the end of this season), but so far they have been great, both the characters and the actors imo. Dany: You're going to advise me. While you can still speak in complete sentences. Tyrion: Advise you on what? Dany: How to get what I want. Tyrion: The Iron Throne? Perhaps you should try wanting something else. Dany: If I want jokes, I'll get myself a proper fool.

I got the impression that dozens to hundreds of Wildlings (plus maybe a giant with his own floaty) made it onto the boats? And another revolt in the NW after they just killed Mormont would seem like repetitive and lazy storytelling. Not that A Show has been above that in prior episodes this season. Wouldn't Olly be more likely to try to kill Tormund, though?

Valaryian Steel! My next British hair metal band. Where is Knifey? I hope they didn't bury Widows Wail with that asshat Joffrey If Brienne has one of the few Valaryian steel swords around, does that mean that we get to see some Brienne v WW action at some point?!? <brain explodes>

I honestly thought it was going to be like Roarks Drift, where the attacking masses are held off, but just barely. There were actually several nods to the movie Zulu, I thought: The "chiefs" on the hills above the town, the attackers probing for weaknesses and trying to attack thru a thatched roof. Once the WW appeared in the town, I figured "dragonglass" and the attack would be repulsed, because dragonglass and a freaking giant should carry the day. Once the skeleton-lemming wave started, it was pretty clear that this was going to be the end of the Wildlings as a significant force. I also had a bit of a problem with how the zombonis will move at the speed of plot necessity (they shamble, until the show needs them to run), but I thought the Battle of Hardholm was very well done. Like try to kill Thormund? It would be a nice call-back to his first meeting with Jon... Jon: My father told me big men fall just as quick as little ones if you put a sword through their hearts. Thormund: Plenty of little men tried to put their swords through my heart. And there's plenty of little skeletons buried in the woods. And what a backstory! Tyrion: When I was a young man, I heard a story about a baby born during the worst storm in living memory. She had no wealth, no lands, no army, only a name and a handful of supporters, most of whom probably thought they could use that name to benefit themselves. They kept her alive, moving her from place to place, often hours ahead of the men who'd been sent to kill her. She was eventually sold off to some warlord on the edge of the world and that appeared to be that.* And then a few years later, the most well-informed person I knew told me that this girl without wealth, lands, or armies had somehow acquired all three in a very short span of time, along with three dragons. He thought she was our best, last chance to build a better world. I thought you were worth meeting at the very least. *(I loved the expression on the face of the actress playing Dany here) Still waiting in that brothel. The prostitutes are super irritated with Varys at this point -- he doesn't buy much wine, and seems uninterested in purchasing their other... services.

I rather liked this one. The Arya thing was very cool to watch. I Liked Jacqen a lot more when Arya owed him 3 lives and had some control over him. He looked loads better when he wore Lannister armour though, it is known. The battle for Hardholm was compelling, kept me guessing, had a giant swinging a burning tree, and did not end as I thought it would. And Cersei, sweet sweet Cersei... I didn't want to go fetal like one of Stannis' "sons" after a scene in The North, so that is an improvement. Might have a chance at making the Top Ten Episodes, I will have to rewatch. I hope Tommen at least has Ser Pounce to ease his pain.

If Watching Cersei Slurp Water Off a Floor was a sport, I would at least be in the running for a spot on the national team. Putting aside what I consider the ridiculous plot machination(s) that got her there, that was deeply, deeply satisfying.

The Dornishman's wife was as fair as the sun And her kisses were warmer than spring The Dornishman's blade It was made of black steel And its kiss was a terrible thing The Dornishman's wife would sing as she bathed In a voice that was sweet as a peach... (Jaime rudely interrupts) (Bronn continues in prison) Brothers, O brothers, my days here are done The Dornishman's taken my life But what does it matter For all men must die And I've tasted the Dornishman's wife, I have, I've tasted the Dornishman's wife.

chocbutterfly: I liked your Long Haul list rather a lot, but am wavering about Jon's long-term prospects now that so much focus has been on Sam and Gilly. I honestly don't want to see any more of Sansa if it is going to be more of this pig shite. I would rather see what Yara and Balon are doing than see more of that. Almost. stillshimpy: If I had the ability to create and embed gifs here, you would get the Joffrey slow clap for that post. We still have some characters that are interesting in A Show (even if I can't "root" for some of them), but too many are teetering on or fully over into caricature (Ramsay, Sand Snakes, Dany), have been altered in ways that don't seem consistent with their prior character development (most of the KL crew, including Jaime, Olenna, and Margaery), or feel like chess pieces being pushed around (Jaime again, Perpetual Punching Bag Sansa, Stannis) . Whether the wheel-spinning is from A Show or the Things That Do Not Exist, the blame must lay with A Show, because a bunch of the material was already published. For instance, the Wardeness of the North -- Maybe it wasn't in the first book or two of the original source material and had to be grafted in later. The show runners knew that early on, possibly even before S1, so it would have made sense to include some mention of it in previous seasons and not just spring it on us this season, where it feels like a retcon rather than an organic part of this world. And the best thing about having watched The Wire is the ability to tell everyone else how it was better than whatever it is that they are currently watching. RE: Varys -- I hope the next scene we see of Varys is him looking perturbed in that brothel, drumming his fingers on the table and looking annoyed, muttering 'how long could Tyrion possibly take in there?!?' gingerella: I think that the early Dany / Drogo sex scenes were rape to me. The reason it didn't stick in my craw the way Sansa's has is that Dany was already on the way to being a different person (so her assault wasn't some lame "launching pad" for her character arc), and she was interacting with someone who wasn't a cartoon villain.

Remember back in Season One, when Shae, Bronn, and Tyrion were playing drinking games in a tent? Tyrion told about how Jaime arranged for him to have sex for the first time, and Shae called BS. Loudly. Shae: A girl who was almost raped doesn't invite another man into her bed two hours later. And then that is exactly what Gilly does. Though I guess technically her gratitude should be directed to Ghost, but I don't think even this show is going to go there. I am beginning to tire of the retcons. Homosexuality was the sort of thing you kept private and were a bit embarrassed about until this season, when it needs to be a sin against the gods! Then how did Renley, a well known gay man, amass such a huge number of bannermen? And if being gay was forbidden in the Seven Pointed Star, maybe Joffrey would have mentioned that, instead of merely contemplating making Renley's "degeneracy" against the law? The Unsullied are the Greatest, until the show needs them to not be, so that some street punks can take them down. Same thing with Loras getting pwned by some fanatics in robes. No mention of "greyscale" or "stone men" before, but now they are everywhere (well, near The Doom at least). "The North Remembers", until it is convenient that they develop collective amnesia. Characters act inconsistently with what we know about them, with no explanation as to why. Grrrrrrrrrr...

Loved your post, Llywela. Agree with much of it. Neither Ramsay nor Big Bird have a long game. Small point, but Polliver was introduced as being a squire for Loras at the same time he was a spy for Littlefinger. P and L end up in bed together, and then P tells LF about the Tyrell plan to marry L to Sansa. Now, did he become "attached" to LF Brothel before or after he started spying? No idea. That was back before the plot went off the rails. :-)

I feel you gingerella. Useless! USELESS!! Jaqen lost all of his Charisma points when he crossed the Narrow Sea. He went from Enigma in Lannister armor to Mystic in a Toga. I was psyched to see Braavos, but we have seen one street scene, an eye-strainingly dark interior, and a huge exterior. This is not the Braavos I expected. There used to be some plot twist or we would learn something new about a character's... character and, the more I thought about it the more it made sense and seemed inevitable. This season, A Show is either spinning it's wheels or doing something that makes no sense. I still love the world the show has created, but I'm feeling less and less invested. A small example-- Stannis offered to make Jon Lord of Winterfell, and Jon declined, but there was NO mention of the actual heirs to Winterfell even though Jon knew that (at least) Bran was recently seen alive. Maybe Jon didn't trust Stannis with that info. OK, then have Jon discuss that aspect with Sam when Jon says 'I won't accept '. The last three episode had better be E. P. I. C!

Maybe what Tile Face was painting on that guy's back was a spell against greyscale? Jorah should have looked up someone like her for some magic henna tattooing before leaving Volantis. "All who sail too close to the Doom must have protection."