mac123x

Piling on here: Robb wanted to lead Tywin into a trap. One of the ways you lead someone into a trap is to show them what they expect to see then pull the rug out from under them. Robb did that at the Green Fork: he had his foot soldiers attack Tywin's forces (as Tywin expected), while detaching his horseman to the Whispering Woods. So now he tried to lure Tywin back into the West. Tywin had already fallen for one of Robb's deceptions, so he might be a little cautious. If Edmure held back to just Riverrun, and Tywin passed unmolested through the Riverlands on his way back west, he might become a little suspicious. "That was convenient... too convenient." Robb should have told Eddy to put up some resistance, but to let Tywin through. It'd present Tywin with exactly what he'd expect: that the Riverlords would be ineffectual without Robb leading them. I'd also think that Robb would want Edmure leading some of his forces west behind Tywin's army so they could smash into his rear when Robb's forces hit from the front.

Lysa used Tears of Lys on Jon Arryn. Show!Cercei was about to give Tommen essence of nightshade, which is a sleeping potion

That woman's prophecies, like pretty much all of them in the books, are highly and widely parsed and debated amongst fandom. And that's all I'll say about that. I could buy Sybell Westerling sending a raven-mail to Tywin, basically saying "oh crap, Robb bedded then wedded out daughter after he took our castle [maybe even insinuating that it wasn't their choice]. Please don't Castamere us." Tywin then says "aha, this can be to our advantage" and writes back telling her what to do and that she'll be rewarded. The timing of that is sketchy, since the ravens would have to fly back and forth in the short span of time between Robb's wedding and their departure from the Crag. I still have a problem with the idea that Tywin set it up ahead of time, because it requires too much foreknowledge on his part (where Robb was attacking next, that he'd succeed, etc.) and would have had to occur while Tywin was on the move from Harrenhal to the Red Fork back to Harrenhal and on to Kings Landing. Alternatively, Tywin could have set up honeypot traps with all the minor houses in the West, and the Westerlings were just the winners of the use-your-daughter lotto.

It was quite grating. When Jon showed some ignorance about Wildling culture, she'd make fun of him. When she showed ignorance about the Seven Kingdoms and he corrected her, she'd still make fun of him for it. She came across as a self-absorbed, rigid jingoist: the Wildling way is the only way and everything else is crap. It was a little better in the show, since Rose Leslie gave it a "good-natured teasing" lilt to it. And she didn't say it nearly as often.

When I first read the Stark kids' ages I actually wondered if the length of a year was different on Planetos. I mean, the seasons don't match up to ours, so maybe the years were longer also, say 1.5 times as long. Arguing against that is that Sansa (among others) "flowered" about the same age as an Earthling girl would, so a year there = a year here.

I agree with the bolded part. At the time I read this part of it I figured that was the case, but my problem with it comes later:

Me too. her character was immersion breaking. We've been led to believe, over and over, that Westeros is a male-dominated midieval society, and that women alone are very vulnerable especially in times of war. For example, the three women Brienne finds hanging in a tree, or Cercei's comments to Sansa about the fates of the women in KL if the city is sacked. The idea that Dr. Talisa Medicine Woman would be able to ply her craft and not get kidnapped / raped / killed was so at odds with this setting that I didn't buy it for a second. They should have at least made her attached to one of the Riverlords' households. But then she wouldn't have been able to be so smug about her enlightened "I treat anyone who is injured, no matter what side they were fighting on" philosophy. Next big event I'm looking forward to: Shimpy's interpretation of .

The show didn't do much with the legend of Renly's Ghost, which I thought was a nice touch showing how actual events develop into fairy-tale stories through word of mouth and embellishment by singers. Probably something that works better on paper than TV On my first re-read that gave me chills. And it made me go back a reread everything else Patchface sang just to see if I could like it up with other events.

Well, not to be too cynical, but this is GRRM we're talking about. We spent what, 3-4 chapters with Quentin Martell for him to wind up dead having accomplished little. We didn't need to see his difficulties reaching Meereen, but there they are.

This is one of the areas that the show improved, I think. Olenna in the books is pretty unpleasant, but Diana Rigg's performance gave her a little more humanity. In the book, she's basically interrogating Sansa about Joffrey's character. She did the same thing on the show, but her tone of voice and body language came across as more sympathetic.

I assumed that Marge (and Loras) will have a trial at which Olyvar comes forward and recants his previous testimony at the inquest, and maybe even state (lie) that Cercei coerced his false testimony. My basis is the Littlefinger / Olenna conversation where he said he was giving her a "handsome young man". Marge and Loras are cleared of all charges, and Cercei gets even more vindictive.

I'm drawing a blank: what is the septon's speech?

Sparkplug? Really? That sounds more like a slightly derogatory nickname someone who doesn't care for Inhumans (cough MAC cough) would call him.

That's pretty much where I am. If they'd actually planned it out starting when CeCe first showed up, there wouldn't be all these plot-holes that they try to paper over after the fact. Marlene's subsequent comments definitely come across as Dear Negative Reader which is never a good sign.

Best thing about this half-season being over: no more obnoxious Miley Cyrus commercials for the MTV Music Awards. Seeing her contorted face and Gene-Simmons-esque tongue in the lower right corner during a dramatic scene was really distracting.

Spoiler tagging since Shimpy is still in Book 2: I have a hard time believing R&L were in love, considering how little they interacted before he dropped the tournament laurels in her lap. Maybe there was more to the "dragon has three heads" prophecy that led him to believe "aha! she fits criteria X Y and Z of the prophecy, so she must be the mother of my third child!" I have a very hard time parsing Lyanna's motive for going along with this.

The World of Ice and Fire book spells out the order of events pretty linearly. I don't know how canonical that book is, but in that timeline, Rhaegar died before Elia. I think the "Jon isn't a bastard because R&L were actually married" theory is premised on Rhaegar being a bigamist like Aegon the Conqueror. In my opinion that doesn't make a great precedent. Aegon was already married to both his wives before he landed in Westeros, and everyone sort of accepted it afterwards because, well, dragons.

Lydia was reading something about the Wild Hunt from Nordic / Germanic mythology, and Parrish's species being a black dog. She said it was "also known as a hellhound" [cue musical sting and stupid hashtag to let us know that was important]. Honestly, when she said "black dog" I thought of The Grim from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. An interview with Jeff Davis Sounds it doesn't have anything to do with Christian hell, and more of a pre-Christian creature that got re-labeled later.

From 2 pages ago about the Book!House of the Undying: Also it allows them to avoid a really big spoiler, namely the Red Wedding. Dany's vision of that was a little too on-the-nose, with the dead king having a wolf's head. If they'd included that in Season 2, the audience would have spent season 3 wondering when it was going to happen, and as soon as they realized that the wedding feast would be in episode 9, a lot of people would have figured it out and it would have lost some of the shock value. This scene was one of the deviations from the book that made Ned look even dumber. Catlyn monologued about how, when Jon was near death, she realized that she was a horrible person for taking out her anger at Ned on him, and she made a promise to the Seven that she'd treat him like one of her own. It was the perfect excuse for Ned to let her know the Big Secret, because she had a a plausible explanation for no longer treating him like garbage. "Yes, I resented him, but the Seven showed me the error of my ways." In the book, while he's rotting in a Black Cell, Ned thinks about what Cat would do to protect her children; I've always interpreted that as Ned knew full well that Cat would throw Jon under the bus in a heartbeat to save her kids, so that's why he never told her.

From the recap: I know Theo exposited the bolded part when he was naked in front of Malia, but it's a serious case of tell-don't-show. He was with her, purely by happenstance, when she had her flashback that showed the Desert Wolf shooting her car up. That's the only emotional interaction they've had and it was accidental. Every other scene they had together, he was flirting with her heavily (mainly by removing his shirt), and she was having none of it. I never saw her being drawn to him; at best she was indifferent. Theo had little to do with the separation between Malia and Stiles. They did it to themselves by not talking about their Issues with DW and Donovan.

Let me be the first to say... what? Teen Wolf has a habit of nonsensical and quite stupid season finales, but this one takes the cake. Nonsensical, stupid, and a cliff-hanger. Ugh. What the fuck was that ending? All the formerly dead and burned chimerae are alive again and Theo's zombie army. Is that part of the Doctors' plan or has he gone rogue? Also, what was the thing behind the wall that the Doctor's uncovered? I thought they were going to break the wall down and a supernatural creature would come out, their "success!". I don't see how all their experimentation was leading them to a mural. I literally yelled "Braeden! Finally, someone competent is here." Too bad she's part of the B plot and not here to help our alleged heroes pull their head out of their asses.

I don't get why Lydia and crew were having a hard time finding the Nemeton. Isn't that where they rescued the parents during the Darach saga? Did they just forget where it was? Does it move? Lydia sure learned martial arts quickly. #FightLikeABanshee #StopWithTheHashtagsAlready Ok, now I feel like an idiot for not getting that even after I typed it out. I was looking for something more clever. I think the run time is around 42 minutes like most shows. Including commercials, it runs over an hour, so its probably the extra commercials they're running (we need to see 14 different versions of Miley Cyrus acting obnoxious while pimping the MTV Music Awards) that make the actual show seem shorter. Six minutes of show, 3 minutes of commercials. Repeat. The only word I could understand consistently was "syzygy". They're telling Theo that he has until the syzygy to do something, which evidently is the next night -- Scott told Liam that the full moon was tomorrow.

Unlikely ally was.... his inhaler? Oh, I get it, it was his confession to Theo at the beginning. Wow, talk about a misleading description. Liam: "You know the combination?" Hayley: "It's 12-34-56" L: "...umm, that's..." H: "yeah, he's an idiot". I don't get it. This season is ending with a cliffhanger right? 9th episode and not even close to working the problem. The fight with the DD at the end had me shouting "rip out the tubes on the side of their helmets, Scott, you idiot." I really don't care for the misunderstanding and lack of communication between Stiles and Scott. "He would have killed my dad!" No, dipshit, he was trying to kill YOU. Say that! Scott even gave an opening when he said "the way you killed him...". "What? It wasn't intentional, the scaffold fell on him." "Theo told me you beat him to death". "Oh really." [They go inside and beat the shit out of Theo]

Did we ever find out what Shady Rhys was doing 1) meeting up with undercover officer Clark at the abandoned doll factory (ep 08) and 2) at the DiLaurentis house at night when the PLMs went there to confront Kenneth (ep 09)? I know one of the girls found his resume on the Enterprise's bridge compluter and said he was legit, but did they ever explain that other stuff?

Myxzptlk. His mom was a huge fan of Superman comics.