WearyTraveler

For me, all of it feels icky. Jon-Dany, Jon-Sansa.... eeewwww!

I loved this challenge. It was great to have the artists focus on the paint job and to minimize the gory aspects of the challenges. I wish we had a season of beauty make-ups only, as I think that seems to be what a lot of contestants lack. I don't even know why so many of them are so unskilled in that regard. If you want a career as a makeup artist in Hollywood, there are much more movies/TV shows featuring regular or beauty makeups than there are gory/scary makeups. It baffles me that a lot of the artists competing on Face Off admit to not having any beauty makeup experience. While I loved this challenge, I too am concerned about Face Off trying to shorten challenge duration for the future. I think they might be doing thi kind of shorter challenges as a way to test the waters and see if it could work in the future. I hope they realize that two or three challenges of this type a season is a good thing but that they don't go the cheap Project Runway route of having 99% of the challenges be one-day, stressful, drama generating challenges. That totally ruins the quality of the final products the contestants present and the enjoyment of the show. I really liked Nora's frost bitten guy and her goblins. She's one of my favorites this season. I didn't think Jasmine would go before Evan, but her makeups this challenge were very bad, so, I agree with the judges' decision this time. I think the next to go will probably be Evan and Megan, as the quality of their work seems inferior to the other contestants that remain. Unless they pull something really brilliant in the next couple of episodes. I also think Stevie is on borrowed time. Her paint jobs are always so bright they read almost cartoonish to me. That green was positively fluorescent. I didn't like it at all, but it must have read better in person, as the judges seemed to like it. Anyway, my guess for the next three eliminations is Evan, Stevie and Meg. Possibly in that order. All in all, good recovery episode this week. I hope they have The Gauntlet challenge again next season. Actually, I wouldn't object to the concept of a leaderboard for an entire season, like they do in Dancing with the Stars. If the show is looking for more audience participation, this could be a good way to have that happen. People could tweet for the contestant they wish the show to keep from the leaderboard's bottom three. Or even if they don't include the audience, this would allow some people who are good but have a bad day to remain in the competition longer, and to get rid of consistently bottom three performers sooner.

My feeling on the books Vale story is this: While LF is now in control of it, his hold on power in the Vale is tenuous. He's only got control because he's Sweetrobin's stepfather and the boy is kept under control. But once Robert Arryn comes of age, he's supposed to command the Vale. Robert is a wildcard at best, and who knows what he'll do once he becomes the ruler of the Vale. That's not something LF can trust. So, the plan is for Sansa to marry Harry the Heir, and probably have SR killed, so that Sansa, a player LF controls, is in a position to allow LF to continue to control the Vale. Presumably Sansa will have learned how to control and manipulate her husband Harry by then, so, LF will be behind the scenes as much as he was with Lyssa, but still in control. What may happen then is that either LF encourages Sansa to take back the North (through Harry commanding the Vale) or that Sansa actually becomes a better player than LF, discovers his role in her family's downfall, and tosses him aside. And then she urges her husband to go North. Whatever happens in the Vale in the books, I'm pretty sure that eventually Sansa will end up in the North and that the show has simply chosen to get her there sooner.

Your wish is my command :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfmmUa_r-oo

I guess Pycelle could be one of the manipulators in KL. He seemed set up for it at the end of last season. I'm remembering that deleted scene of Pycelle and Tywin where Pycelle drops his weak, old-man mask and admits to Tywin that he's just pretending. But LF staying in KL for a while makes sense too. If the huge North battle is happening in episode 9 and the Vale armies are not there, then we have at least two possibilities: - LF and the Vale show up at the end of the battle, giving the Stark loyalists the edge - LF and the Vale show up in KL in support of the Tyrells. Since it seems they are scrapping the Aegon plot, perhaps they still need an army to threaten the Lannister rule in KL and the Vale will be it.

I once went to a natural mud and clay pool and covered my body with it, the color was similar to what Stevie did with her makeup.

It's great that the witnesses are so connected that their hair length matches. IIRC, some articles stated that the premiere will show Crane and Mills reuniting after they've spent a few months apart; I can hear the dialog in my head: "You cut your hair", "so did you".... he, he!

Or Taalar could have spelled it for her. I spell my name for baristas all the time, because it's a foreign name ;-)

Maybe Cohollo feels that Danny and Rhaego have been tainted by the Maegi and that Rhaego is no longer Drogo's son? Maybe he thinks Rhaego is beyond saving? They do seem to despise and fear Maegis a lot.

It doesn't appear to be mandatory to use prosthetics. Jasmine threw away her piece and did only make up on her guy. She was deemed safe, so, it must not be a requirement to use prosthetics, if it were, she'd have been eliminated (or at least scolded) for not using any.

Sign me up!!! (Do you deliver to Spain?) I'm dancing! Literally! I haven't been this excited about a TV show in a long, long time! And then you have to upload the picture and use the hashtag #MakeithappenGOT (we could start this for all sorts of other things like dragons in Westeros, a Stark reunion, Clegane Bowl, Nymeria and Arya reuniting.... the possibilities are endless!)

Look at it this way, if your team wins, the probability of you going home is 0. If your team loses, the probability of you going home is 1 in 6 (because the teams were made up of 6 members each). All things being equal, the probability of your team wining is 1 in 2 (or 50%), but since not all things are equal (i.e there are some designers that are better than others)the probability of your team wining is directly related to the quality of the designers in your team. The better the designers you have in your team are, the more likely you are to win, thus increasing that 50% chance. Other factors influence this too, you could have a team of awesome designers that just don't work well together and have a disaster, or the judges could not like your collection at all because it's all so subjective. So, you try to influence the variables you control: quality of the designers and working well in a team. Since you pick before the outcome is determined, you have to make a strategic choice: do I want to be in the winning team and eliminate the probability of my going home or do I want to prepare for the possibility of being in the losing team and try to be better than the other designers in my team? Since the objective is to stay in the competition as long as possible, you should pick the strategy that allows you to do that with the least possible risk and that is trying to ensure, above everything else, that you are on the wining team. Picking for the possibility of losing is shooting yourself in the foot because you then increase your chances to be in the losing team when you could just not be in that team at all.

We ought t have t-shirts made with those words: "Promise me, Ned". Then we could take pictures of ourselves wearing the t-shirts and upload them to social media using the hashtag #MakeithappenGOT

I think you have a great attitude! I don't want to offend or upset anyone, and I understand the frustration and the anxiety, given the events of season 2, but I think some things are being blown out of proportion, or at least that some things can't be proclaimed as truth until we see S3. I think these new show-runners are between a rock and a hard place, to put it mildly: - They do what other shows do and publish casting calls and tell fans about new roles (guest, recurring, regular) and the fandom explodes because they are making assumptions about where the story is going based on casting decisions. Maybe the story is going there, maybe not, but some people take their assumptions as 100% certain and then get upset about it. Other shows with hard core followers do this and while some people theorize and say things like "I wouldn't like it if...", there's no outcry of foul play; that happens when the show airs and the fans are not happy with the story decisions, sometimes it happens a few weeks before a particular storyline makes it to the screen, but it's rare when there are such passionate reactions so far in advance of a season premiere. - Now that the premiere is closer, they go to a public event. The two leads are there. Not for all the events, but notice there's no other S3 actor doing any promotion. They release a poster that couldn't have the leads' faces any bigger, with both actors featured equally in size. They talk about Abbie's story alone and her story with her sister (a character the audience wanted to see featured more prominently), and still there's another explosion. As the poster I'm quoting said, entertainment reportes cut interviews for space, and I'll add that no showrunner wants to give too much away either. For all we know, they might actually be trying to surprise us with some awesome things (or not, the point is, we can't tell for sure). - Other shows with a male-female lead (or with popular pairings) tease their audiences constantly. They hint that it might happen, and then say "maybe not", "maybe never", "the time's not right", and so on. Those shows don't get the amount of backlash these guys are getting. - Had they decided to keep mum about everything they are doing, so that their comments are not taken out of context or misunderstood, I'm sure there would be outrage at the silence too. They can't win. And what's worse is that they are paying for someone else's mistakes. I say if they fuck it up again, let the shitstorm rain, but until they do, I think we'd save ourselves some awful times (and maybe avoid getting ulcers) if we just breath, wait and see before we make up our minds.

I don't recall the books mentioning where Luwin is from. I talked about the maester thing because it's my understanding that it takes years and years of training from a very young (impressionable) age to become a master, or anything else, really. I mean, Robb is 15 and he's marching off to war. Sam, who is about Robb and Jon's age, was forced to take the black because Randyll didn't want him to become a master; had Sam been born into a less crazy noble family, it appears he would still have had to make up his mind, at that very young age, between his Lordship and a career at the Citadel. Whatever career a young boy in Westeros is inspired to follow (girls are raised to be wives and mothers, for the most part), it seems he must start very early in his life, during years that are formative and shape the kind of adult these children become. In Luwin's case, we know his chain is long and full of links, so, in addition to starting his training early, in a Southern city, he spent a long time forming his chain in that city. So, in my mind, that contributed to Luwin having a more Southern view on the subjects of magic and the CotF

I tend to agree that, on average, Westerosi people don't strongly believe in magic or the Children of the Forest. That said, there are people in the North like the Reeds and Old Nan who know better. Also, many families in the North still pray to the Old Gods, so, I think Northerners are perhaps more open to accept magic than Southerners.

I'm thinking R'hllor, maybe? Obviously I liked the conversation Bran had with Ned in the crypts and how Ned was sad because of something to do with Jon. It supports my theory that when Jon dies, he'll go to the end of the crypts, which he had never done in his dreams, and find out from Ned about his parentage. I think Luwin in this chapter is meant to represent the paradigms and views of your average southern Westerosi. Luwin got his chain in the citadel, after all, so his belief system reflects a southern mentality, regardless of how many years he's spent serving the Starks. I think the point is that magic has been gone for so long that most everyone has stopped believing and what once was history is now considered fairytales. Not a single person in Westeros is ready for the Others.

I don't understand this reasoning. You're not competing against people from your own team, you're competing against the other team. At the end of the runway show "one person from the winning team will be the winner and one person from the losing team will be out". I'd want all the previous winners in my team, not someone I think I can easily beat. I'd want to ensure that those people end up on the other team. It was a 6 look collection, if 4 out of 6 of my team's design are great and two are bad, we could still be declared the winners (it has happened in the past) and then I will be safe. If 4 out 6 designs in my team are crap, my team will be in the bottom and then I could be on the chopping block, even if my design is good (backstabbing, not getting along because I had a bad day or because I'm not very good in team environments... pick your reason). It's just not a good strategy.

It's like we're CIA spies! Who can we trust? Who will tell us the truth!?

OH.MY.GOD!!! I did! I did forget Benjen! And I'm one of those crazy people obsessed with finding out what happened to him! Shame on me!!! I guess I'm so excited for all these flashbacks and all this focus on the North, my poor little brain couldn't handle it. LOL!

"Ned's younger siblings"? In plural? He only had two: Brandon and Lyanna. Brandon was the heir, so, he wasn't younger than Ned.

I don't think they are trying to kill it. It is well known that, generally, on TV shows the time when protagonists / popular couples are apart (the "will they? won't they?") generates more discussions and tends to increase ratings. It's quite common for TV show to lose that excitement once a couple actually gets together. Some shows do it more successfully than others and there's no formula to determine exactly when that should happen. Teasing the audience works; it keeps them coming back for more, keeps them rooting for it to happen, but after it does, and the initial elation of seeing the couple finally getting together wears down, many audiences find themselves a lot less excited about the show. Not everyone, and a lot of it depends on the execution, but that is a legitimate fear show runners have. Take Ross and Rachel in Friends, they got them together at the right time, and then had to separate them because their story wasn't as interesting for the audience as it used to be. And despite all the flaws Friends might have had, that was one relationship they managed to tease and execute successfully, give some to the audience, take some back, give again, and so on. Then take Bones (who even watches that show anymore?) where they waited so long the audience got frustrated, and when they finally decided to put the leads together, they did it off-screen to the justified anger and resentment of the couple's shippers. I'm not a shipper. I'm usually more interested in all the aspects that have nothing to do with romance, and only very few romantic TV scenes get me. So, looking at this a bit more objectively (I think), it's a hard line to walk and a tough decision to make for the show runners. Not to mention that for this show and for this new show runner, the situation is even more complicated given the history of the show in the second season, which negatively influences even the most innocent of announcements that would not make a dent on any other shows (like hiring a new regular). People make value judgements and jump to conclusions based on what they have experienced with the show in the past and things snowball pretty quickly with the corresponding social media explosions. I think the only way to say if any of the quotes by people involved with the show (such as actors) and decisions taken by show runners are indicative of a right or wrong direction for the show's third season is to watch it. They could be trying to keep them apart for nefarious reasons or they could be trying to exploit that chemistry by teasing the audience with it until there comes a point when they will reward it. I will not know until I see it. And since the show runner is new, I think he deserves a chance to show us what he's thinking before we judge it to be good or bad.

Just for this answer, I love him even more!

YES!!! I would totally support that! Maybe we can start a hashtag. Maybe CherZ can get it started since McKenzie follows her/him. I think some of the models do a great job to elevate the make-ups and should be recognized. Meghan is awesome; if I were a competitor on Face Off I'd always pick her! :D I love the fluidity of English, I love how words are created and incorporated into the language all the time, I don't think there's any other language as fluid. I learned English in the US, but I took a two year sabbatical from the business world to re-evaluate my life and decided to teach English in Spain (still have to pay the bills, right?) and because it's Europe, the standard is British English. I've also been to Australia and New Zealand, so, I'm no stranger to regional differences (color vs. colour, flat vs. apartment, lift vs. elevator, realized vs. realised, Americans doubling the consonants at the end of a verb when constructing the progressive while the British don't -travelling vs. traveling-, etc.) That said, there are basic rules that apply across the board, like the possessive adjectives and pronouns and the ones I mentioned above. Like I said, I know that this is the internet and the rules are more relaxed, so, I've learned to ignore it. Some mistakes are accidental, a product of people typing fast or using a device that isn't helpful (autocorrect is a riot, sometimes); but I will say that I have a hard time when people accuse the creators of a TV show of stupidity and yet they consistently make the same grammatical errors in their posts (I might be a bit of a grammar snob, though. LOL!). Here's a video I used to play for my students when they asked me why English spelling is so weird. It's appropriately titled: "Why is English Spelling so Weird?". It's short, fun, and interesting, so, I hope you guys enjoy it too. And that's the last I'll say about it because I don't want to hijack the thread. ;-) http://mentalfloss.com/article/62995/why-english-spelling-so-weird

Interesting speculations about Tywin. I think that he'd have never contradicted the King in such a public forum, but he might have asked for a pause, taken Joffrey aside and changed his mind. Payne would have paused for Tywin. I'm not sure if Tywin would have allowed such a circus to take place, though. This thing, IIRC, was Cersei's doing. Tywin would have made sure the deal was known to noble families and common people alike because he knows gossip travels far and wide, but I don't think he would have wanted a public humiliation of Ned, knowing how unpredictable such situations can be.