gingerella

Spitball Brethren, the horns have been sounded at Castle East.. WS, I feel your pain.

As always Pallas, so eloquently said! Could it be that this show is about how nobody who truly desires to be King is actually worthy? Because the act of wanting to BE King in and of itself corrupts everyone who seeks to sit on the Iron Throne? The Mad King. Robert, we've been told, was a shit King in other ways, lazy and a drunkard who didnt seem to care about his people. His ego, yes. But his people? Not so much. Joffrey, batshit crazy inbred freak show. Tommen has yet to do anything evil, but he is weak in action, and instead of coming down on the Sparrows, he frets and weeps in his room alone. He is a baby. Stannis just burned alive his only child, the Princess Baratheon. He is shit in my book now. He is no better than Joffs. Each challenge he has faced has led him to make one more bad decision that leads him closer and closer to the dark side. What I cannot figure is how his men can watch him allow his daughter to be burned alive at the stake and STILL follow this idiot. I know, where would deserters even go now? They could go back to Castle Black and offer to fight with Jon and the NW instead... I just dont get how Stannis hasnt had a massive mutiny yet. Then again, perhaps his men are horrified and terrified of Mel, she of the great rack. maybe she mesmerized all the men with a flash of her tits? Tis baffling how he manages to keep his men in line after this.

I dont even know where to start with this shit. Dorne, okey dokey, so wheel chair dude is more menacing than I gave him credit for, enough to bring Ellaria to her knees and cry. And Jaime and Bronn and going back to KL with the Prince of Dorne and Myrcella in tow, and Princey will be on the kings Council. Okay, thats wrapping the Dorne stuff up pretty quickly. All that efforts on sets for Dorne and this is all we get? Jon and crew must have taken the bullet express from Hardhome to Castle Black, eh? At least they opened up the gate to let them back in, I wondered if they would or not. Still thinking Ollie is going to cock it all up with some vengeance crap behind Jon's back. Stannis...well, stands to reason that the sniveling little piece of shit that is Ramsey would burn people down, not surprised with his level of conniving "strategery". I was hoping that Davos would take Shireen with him without asking, because I could read the writing on the wall when Stannis sent him away, Davos is the only one in that crew who would have stood up to that shit. And to that shit, it better fucking work after that. Poor kid, she really was the only decent being in that family. So now Stannis is no better than that little fucker Joffrey. Burning your own daughter alive so as a sacrifice to becomg King? Fuck the fuck off you fucking fuckhead! We all saw the Harpylympics coming from an episode away, so no surprise there. That said, I could barely watch that scene. I literally watched the upper left corner of the screen through my own hand blocking the screen. When the Scooby Doo Dragoon Gang was surrounded in the center of the ring, I kept thinking loudly, "CALL BLACKIE FOR FUCKS SAKE!" Honestly, Dany is a wee bit slow on the uptake. And I would think that a dragon would be more impervious to a mere mortal's spear. And for shits sake, where is Dany riding Blackie to because, yanno, she's got two other dragoons down in the dungeon and it doesnt seem safe to have two dragons locked up in a shooting gallery for the Harpies to take out now, yanno what I mean? That said, Dany reacts to Drogon as if she is in love with him, not that he is her child, but that he is her lover, which leads me to wonder if she can create additional dragons with him somehow...I know it sounds weird but I was thinking, if the dragons are meant to lead the way in some manner in the fight against the WWs and their army of death, they will need more than 3 of them, but how can the 3 dragons mate because they seem to be siblings, yes? Enter the Mother of Dragons...maybe there is a way she can fertilize more dragon eggs. Hey, its late, I"m tired and emotionally disgusted with this show so I'm shooting at anything I can right now.

Thanks Maester WS! It's weird that so far, only Stannis responded or even mentioned reading Maester Aemon's ravegram. I don't recall anyone else saying boo about it. I mean come ON, you get a ravengram saying that WWs are real and ARE coming NOW and you don't DO anything? Just keep going about your business? Strange... I didnt' remember about Jon's burn, too bad, I liked that spitball...sniff...

So, uh, I hesitate to say this but, I woke up this morning thinking about this show and here's what I was thinking... First, I cannot remember so can one of my Unsullied Spitball Wall brethren please refresh A Viewer's memory? How did Stannis know that Jon needed his cavalry to ride in and save him and the NW from Mance's Wildling invasion at the end of last season? I cant remember, was it a vision Mel saw in the fire or did Jon or someone send a ravengram? I cannot remember at all. Second, I was thinking about how Mel's been eyeing Jon since she set her eyes on him...What if Mel's magical mojo is something that requires "topping off" because it gets depleted when she tosses out a big spitball to Stannis? What if she knows she's running out of magical steam, so to speak, and she needs to top up her magic power reserves? And what if the way she does that is to schtup a dude who has some sort of power to him. In the case of Gendry, we know/theorize that she senses/knows he has King's blood in him since he is Robert's bastard, so she would gain more power from that, natch. But why does she want to ride Jon's baloney pony so badly? IF - and that's a big 'IF' that we may never know - Jon is indeed the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryan, he would have Targ blood in him, right? What if he is one of the Targ's (hehe, I keep typing Tard by mistake...or is it?...) who is immune to fire? What if Mel senses/intuits that, and by schtupping Jon, she thinks she will become immune to fire, ergo, she can do some pretty nifty mind fucking with folks when it comes time to get a whole bunch of people to bend the knee to her God of Fire? Imagine a huge group of people poo-pooing and mocking her and her God, then she literally walks through fire untouched - because she got some sort of fire immunity from doing Jon - I would imagine being able to pull off something like that would get a whole lotta folks to convert immediately, yes? What thinketh you all? I know, I know, it's not healthy to wake up and have this be the thing you're mulling over before you get out of bed.

I echo my fellow Spitballers Nymeria, your efforts have been epic. I bend the knee to you my friend ~

He's planning on giving Dany a case of Harpies as a wedding gift perhaps?

Well, its about on par with our friend Mr. Ducksauce, remember him?

It's like George Constanza backwards world.

Leave it to our trusty White Stumbler to cite one of my all time fav places on planet earth! WS, you are fast becoming the Spitball Wall's Sam the Wizard, studiously reviewing the ancients transcripts of A Show for your brothers of the Spitball Watch to learn and heed from. I bend the knee to you, my friend. Also, related to sealing the unmanned Wall gates with "ice and stone", that sounds all hunky dory IF it had been perpetually Winter for a long time, but since we know Bran was born in Summer and Winter has been coming only recently (well, recently as the crow flies, no pun intended), one would assume that even the thickest ice may have melted during the long Summer...so many holes, so little details...*sigh*

Janjan, I cracked up reading this because I was imagining a Neolithic cave man sitting back in a lounge chair around a 1960's kidney shaped pool (Hey! Pool shape like Thor's insides, taste yum, me hungry, *grunts and looks around for pool boy to order pterodactyl wings), then goes back to surfing iRock.

Well we saw that Hardhome is basically a box canyon snugged up and surrounded by mountains, presumably made up of, yanno, rock, which is hard, and they have made it their home so, Hardhome isn't that far fetched if you think about it that way. But I still maintain it's a really stupid place to hang out and box yourself in when you know shit is about to get very real. I still think the more logical storyline would have been for them to bust through one of the umpteen gates in the Wall that are not currently manned. Just sayin'.

Yeah, yeah, yeah...BUT...something still does not make sense to me. It appears by that map, that one could rather easily go AROUND The Wall on the west side of Shadow Tower so what's the point of The Wall if one can simply walk around the damn thing?! There seems to be a clear snippet of land there, which was where I was confused because I thought the Wall went from water to water, hence being a complete barrier to all things evil. But man, you can just walk around Shadow Tower and your in! Grrrr, this isn't making sense...

Oh shit, now I see why I've been so backassward about this Hardhome location! I thought Hardhome was clear on the other western most side of the Wall, DUH. Thank you most merciful White Cloaks.

Janjan, you knows I loves you and yer dragadoon, but ye gods, that's a slippery slope if we start allowing vid clips again. Our Words should be: We Remember [the necklace].

WS, your name belies your talent because as usual, you have de-stumbled, or stabilized my thinking, thank you my esteemed Spitball Wall friend and brethren! That makes a wee bit more sense now. I wish we could create - mind you, I have no inclination to do so, just wishful thinking aloud - a map for the Unsullied that didn't spoiler us, but showed us all the places we know from A Show only. I am a visual thinker and I continuously get lost as to what, where, when, why and how with A Show, particularly where places are in relation to one another. Oy! That said, it still seems that Hardhome was a rather stupid place for the FF to set up their main base camp because they are pretty much the only people, aside from those NW who've seen the WWs in person, who know how awful the WWs and their army of dead are, so why would they hunker down and set all their eggs in what amounts to trapping themselves in a box canyon surrounded by mountain on just about all sides, the only escape route appearing to be the sea? I would think they'd be better off trying to get through one of the many unmanned Wall gates that we've been hearing about over and over and over and over. Why not just blast through one of those?

Ha, that gif cracks me up (though I don't think its supposed to). I rather like imagining the head WW's thought bubble to say, "You wanna piece of me bitch, I reanimate dead people, whatch you got?"

No kidding, and if he took ships to get up there, which IIRC he did, then didn't he pass by Hardhome and see all the FF hanging about there? It's not like you couldn't see all those people and their fires from a ship...continuity, it's a good thing.

I also hear 5000, but I thought it was n reference to how many FF were still left on land, not on the boats, but I checked out of that extended scene at a certain point (as referenced by my rant upthread immediately after the scene ended...oopsie). If they only come back with 500 people, and many are children and oldsters, that aint gonna help the NW very much. Another problem with this Hardhome scenario - which I am going to spitball - is that it maybe isnt in the books because it just does not make sense (that is becoming the mantra of S5 isnt it?) because as far as we have been told, The Wall extends thousands of miles in either direction of Castle Black, I would assume from one shoreline of somewhere east to some shoreline of somewhere west because there has to be a natural cutting off point where a wall is no longer needed to keep something on the other side, does that make sense so far? If so, and if "north of the wall" extends a far bit of distance northward - because lets not forget how long the NW party with Jon and Sam was out there, it wasnt just a day or two away from the wall - then how the hell did Jon and Thormund get to a body of water so fast to even get to Hardhome, whycouldnt they high tail it over there overland? yes, yes, I know, we need water so the baddies cant get them since apparently reanimating dead people seems to be an Olympic land sport, but still, the going by ship to Hardhome makes no sense to me. BTW, I did love seeing Tyrion banter with Dany, interpersonal communication really is his forte, and I love Tyrion best when he is "on" and being snarky.

Yeah, all evil mommy dearest aside, I would miss Lena's portrayal of Cersei very much. Here's hoping she gets another go at things, whatever that means!

Interesting spitballing around our dear friend, Lady Brienne of Tarth. And here she thought her life's mission was to galavant around the Seven Kingdoms, attending to and defending high born lords and ladies, when in fact she might come face to face with a WW, zombonie, etc. I wonder how ol Brienne would fare under such circumstances since to date she's really been a fighter of men, it's not even clear to me what she knows or thinks about Winter Coming. Has she ever uttered the words? I cant remember her doing so, so it is intriguing to consider how she would react in that situation. That said, I wonder if she does end up fighting with the NW, et al, how she will be accepted being a woman and all. What they almost did to Gilly was pretty rank, maybe Jon's return will re settle the men a bit, though it seems like he's bringing a hell of a lot of trouble with him. And yet...when Jon does arrive back at Castle Black with all those Free Folk in tow, at least they ALL will be able to say, "man, the shit that's coming at us is unbelieveable, just you wait and see...really awful stuff..." and it wont be Jon's word against all his men, he'll have thousands of Free Folk who saw what went down at Hardhome too to back him up. I wonder how that will help or hinder incorporating the Free Folk into the NW fighting squad... ETA: WS, I get what you're saying about Dany and Drogo on the one hand, but to me, at first I saw it more as he was doing what one does with one's wife. She was inexperienced, what was she going to do? She did it how and when he wanted it, but then she found a way to be with him on her own terms, and he seemed to like that too. And she clearly fell in love with him, I cant see someone like Sansa falling in love with hideous shithead Ramsey. So to me, with Dany it didn't feel like rape in the same way Sansa's was brutal and terrorizing, don't know if that makes sense or not. ETA2: Can we get a full head count of all the Valyrian steel that's out there at the moment (ie: who has what and where)?

WS, I am curious, how exactly did you think that battle would end? You said you were surprised, so I was wondering...

No shit, WS, that was perhaps the best part of what I felt was a supremely effed up episode. But watching Cersei slurp water off a dirty floor? Priceless! what sayeth that about us though?

Dire, I wish I could share your enthusiasm about this episode, but I am squarely with Janjan on this one - A Show has become a laughable, fast forwardable parody of its former self. It is official, this show is fucking lame. Lame. LAME. For realz. Congratulations show runners, way to cock up what was a glorious show into a laughable cartoon version of itself. Dimwitted assholes in charge. Do you - and by YOU I mean the show runners - know how motherfuckingly difficult it is to remain Unsullied or FIVE fucking seasons?! DO YOU? Do you know what its like to be, say, on a plane and try to shut up a bookwalker who is in ear shot just to remain Unsullied? Do you know how challenging it is to do most of your work on a computer and manage to AVOID SPOILERS all the damn time to remain Unsullied? And for what? So we can be entertained with an army of the lamest, most laughable CGI'd to death (pun unintended) Army of the Dead?!? I mean shit, man, at least when we saw the WWs or whatever the fuck we saw march past Sam, it was scary but not cartoonish and laughable. But this? THIS? It's just a bad joke. It is becoming more and more difficult to justify remaining Unsullied because the payoff is, well, stupid and lame. Whoever is making these decisions on CGI needs to be fired immediately because they suck and have no aesthetic understanding of when things cross over into cartoon territory. More specifically, I thought the bits and pieces were still too slow to be move this story forward more than a very wee lurch. Arya - interesting but slooooow. Sansa - at least we didnt see her getting tortured again. Theon, just die already FFS. Cersei, mildly deserving, but again, snails pace. Tyrion and Dany? Are.You.Fucking.Kidding.Me? So the Lannister imp saunters into Mereen and Dan makes him her trusted advisor over one round of happy hour drinks? WTF?! If that is her MO, then she is a shitty ruler and doesnt deserve to rule a dragon's fart let alone actual people. There are currently so many holes in this show story that it stinks like rotting swiss cheese. First of all, where the hell has this army of dead things been hanging out for like hundreds of years or whenever the last Winter was? I mean, where are they in the off seasons when Winter Isnt Coming? And why is their apparent leader leading a dead army in the first place? I mean its not interesting unless I know some back story to this. The show is grossly lacking in being able to tell its story on TV and provide the details required to hold a viewers attention for the long haul. This is a huge flaw the show is suffering from this season. HUGE. H.U.G.E. Another huge issue I am having is that there are just too many things going on in one episode. I appreciate checking in with this character or that one, but perhaps if TPTB extended the season to a reasonable number of episodes, say 20, we could spend more time in depth with a smaller number of characters per episode, or just have a longer season to delve into the details that feel lacking right now. Uch, this show has become a tedious and sadly unamusing chore this season. I tire of this pig shite. Oh, and BTW, White Walkers, Wights, dead thing zombonies - what the hell is the difference between all these cartoon characters, or are they all the same things? If you're going to have a villain in a story, dont have like eleventy versions of them, have one mofo badass villain, not this hot buttered mess. It's not even scary - I'm the biggest scaredy cat of them all, and I'm not scared by this CGI stuff, I'm just SMDH over the stupidness of it. Ruining the portrayal of the MOST OMNIPOTENT BADDIES of this show and turning them into cartoons that are laughable reduces the entire story because the entire friggin story is about WINTER COMING and the EVIL MONSTERS that come with it. So now, its like Winter is Coming, oh, and there's lots of gross looking blue eyed dead soldier cartoon characters, wheeeee! ETA2: See, Pallas, I didnt even realize that Valyrian steel can kill a WW because my eyes were rolling so far back in my head during that scene. So Valyrian steel and dragon glass are both kryptonite for the army of cartoonish things? It was Valyria where the Stone Men jumped Jorah right? So maybe Jorah will lead a mission to Valyria to get more dragon glass and/or Valyrian steel to fight the cartoon army...just spitballin' while A Viewer calms the fuck down a little bit...

DirewolfPup said: Yes! This, This, This times a kajillion kwabillion (that is a fucking lot, BTW)! I call this the "Bond Syndrome". Have you ever watched a James Bond 007 Marathon? If so, you've noticed no doubt, the amazing word play and cheeky inuendos and nuances in the dialogue that both James and some of his amorous intendeds banter back and forth to each other during the Sean Connery years. And though Roger Moore tried to keep that going, it just was never the same as when Sean delivered those cheeky, hilarious lines ("Pussy Galore" anyone?! http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000345/quotes). They also focused a lot on the "in between" moments in those early Bond films - we got a lot of bedroom dialogue, as well as dinner dialogue, James dressing, showering, shit went down during those times, but we got a more well rounded look at our protagonist and we knew him all the better for it. And while I still watch every new Bond film that comes out, they are not anywhere near as fab as they once were because gone is the fun, cheeky innuendo dialogue, gone are the in between scenes where we see our guy eating, getting ready for an evening out, hobnobbing with the good and bad guys, etc. Now we get one explosive chase scene immediately connected to the next explosive fight scene. It's exhausting and tedious to watch now, the joy is no longer there. THAT is what this show is starting to turn into. It's lost its joy, the cheeky sometimes almost gallows humor, the wonder of will she or wont he with characters like Brienne and Jamie, the in between scenes like Tyrion used to have with Shae where you see them wining and dining whilst talking about life stuff. All of that has been replaced with the horrible after horrible after horrible happening to most of our beloved characters. It feels exhausting, demeaning, and not fun anymore. Behold the Bond Syndrome! One character I noticed last night, was Dany. Dany seems to be the only female character who has yet to be raped and brutalized. Yes her first days with Drogo were scary, but even when he started having sex with her, it wasn't brutal, it was just rudimentary, which Dany rectified with her sex teacher. But isn't it odd that she's the only main female character who is of age (Arya is rather young and Marge seems to be faking it for Tommen's ego's sake), and is having seemingly pleasant, loving sexual relationships? God, I hope typing that out doesn't mean...well, you know... ETA: Janjan, I'm right there with you on that Midnight Train to Varys!