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 gorgon wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
No, just a better indication of how much time has passed.

Exactly.

Forget about teleporting Varys. A girl goes to sleep. Next scene, a girl wakes up in the same location. Her hair is the same length, etc. And terrible, should-be-mortal stab wounds are apparently(?) healed from the way she moves around. Have weeks passed or is it a Festivus miracle? The direction and story give us no indication either way, so something seems amiss. Ergo...it's bad direction, storytelling, or both.

This season ended on a strong note with an extremely well-directed episode. But there were all kinds of awkwardness going on in other episodes as the writers tried to end storylines and bring the endgame. Sure, a lot of that was unavoidable. But certain amounts of storytelling sloppiness, drifting characterizations, and sub-par dialogue was less excusable. I can't be the only one who found the whole Faceless Men storyline to be a huge letdown in the end.

No, you are not.

The various time/distance issues aren't going to ruin the overall experience for me, they're just a bit jarring at times.

 gorgon wrote:

Some in this thread obviously feel differently, but to me "pace" and "big stuff happening" aren't the end-all and be-all, and in fact a good narrative doesn't need to rely on melodrama or being fast-paced.

Well, yes!

Again, this season has been among the best - but that doesn't mean that, with a little more effort, it could have been even better!

Well as for Varys...I mean it takes months to provision enough food for almost 50,000 people to travel by ship (and horses! lets not forget horses) So Varys leaving and having time to come back makes perfect sense.

And the Writers of the show have said that they will show scenes as they make sense story wise. Not necessarily in Chronological order as that can just leave threads hanging for longer then is needed.

Also Cersei looks nothing like a Sith Lord, Tasha Yar as a Romulan however....

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
Well as for Varys...I mean it takes months to provision enough food for almost 50,000 people to travel by ship (and horses! lets not forget horses) So Varys leaving and having time to come back makes perfect sense.

And the Writers of the show have said that they will show scenes as they make sense story wise. Not necessarily in Chronological order as that can just leave threads hanging for longer then is needed.

Also Cersei looks nothing like a Sith Lord, Tasha Yar as a Romulan however....

Plus we don't want a repeat of season 5, where it was slow as balls.

Ugh that was the worse.

Admittedly I found the whole Arya storyline confusing, but why can she wear the faces without going blind? I thought you had to be no one to wear them without consequence.

 Eldarain wrote:
Admittedly I found the whole Arya storyline confusing, but why can she wear the faces without going blind? I thought you had to be no one to wear them without consequence.

Not necessarily, that may have just been what Jaqen wanted her to think. Going blind was not a punishment for her stepping out of line, or at least it wasn't just that. It was the next stage of her training. It is not the act of wearing the masks that causes her blindness, its from drinking poisoned milk everyday.

At least...thats how it was in the books. The show has completely fethed with continuity, consistency and created countless plot holes.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Admittedly I found the whole Arya storyline confusing, but why can she wear the faces without going blind? I thought you had to be no one to wear them without consequence.

Not necessarily, that may have just been what Jaqen wanted her to think. Going blind was not a punishment for her stepping out of line, or at least it wasn't just that. It was the next stage of her training. It is not the act of wearing the masks that causes her blindness, its from drinking poisoned milk everyday.

At least...thats how it was in the books. The show has completely fethed with continuity, consistency and created countless plot holes.

True. It was good that the series held true to the books in the beginning but it also meant that they had to compress and resolve all those myriad storylines within the show arc as well. GRRM has the same issues as Robert Jordan and most other great fantasy writes of multi volume stories, there are a ton of subplots, tangents and secondary characters that get involved that aren't essential to the primary story. There are plenty of examples of devoting a lot of time/pages for characters to develop or accomplish things that could have been done in a more concise fashion.

I do wonder if there will be some sort of consequences to use the faceless skills outside of the service of their god.

I did wonder if Arya had had to kill the girl to get her face to kill the Frey's?

 d-usa wrote:
I do wonder if there will be some sort of consequences to use the faceless skills outside of the service of their god.

I'm not entirely sure she has left the service of the Many Faced God. The Faceless Men are too smart, too omniscient, too...powerful, to just let a young girl who knows their secrets get away with going rogue and abandoning the order. Arya is a powerful telepath (Warg), probably the most powerful of the Stark children after Bran himself. She regularly dreams and Wargs or skinchanges into her wolf Nymeria, on a completely different continent. Arya was possessing Nymeria when the wolf find and retrieved LSH from the river. She uses cats as her eyes when she was blind. If they have any inkling of her true potential, they wouldn't just let such a powerful asset go.

I suspect that they're cutting corners with her and have fast tracked her training, let her get away with misdemeanour's and (according to the show), just let her walk away from "Jaqen H'Gar" (who appears to be the Leader of the Faceless Men, the equivalent of the Kindly Man) after she is sanctioned and targeted for execution.

All of that leads me to believe that they're rushing her into active service despite knowing full well that she is not "No One". I think they're manipulating her and they want her to go rogue and carry out a killing spree checking names off her list. She might think she's cut ties with the order, but she's unwittingly doing their bidding in a way.

Why? Heres my theory...



But of course, this is the show not the books and more often than not, what appears to be a stupid poorly written plothole really is just a stupid poorly written plothole.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Morden wrote:
I did wonder if Arya had had to kill the girl to get her face to kill the Frey's?

I doubt it. The face does not belong to a servant of the Frey Household, or Walder Frey would have recognised it. Its more likely that she simply snatched a bunch of faces on her way out of the Temple in Braavos.

I never liked how literally the show seemed to take the idea of the "Many Faced God."

When the origins of the Faceless Men are told, it always felt to me like it was a way to calm the simpler, likely uneducated slaves. It's easier to have the people accept "this is a gift of freedom from X god" than "we're gonna kill you if so you're not a slave anymore."

Or maybe that's just how you become a Faceless Man, you train until you are skilled enough to fight/survive in an impossible situation and live (In this case killing another Faceless Man). Then you start collecting faces and the more and more you take the less of you there is until you are No One.

And the Arya/Warg stuff seems to have been dropped from the show or I imagine it would have been introduced by now, same for Jon as well.

That's a very good point. Perhaps part of becoming no one is losing your compassion and becoming a vicious psychotic killer first.

Arya escaping to Westeros and going on a killing spree is just the next stage in her training. That's why Jaqen had such a smug smile on his face.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
Or maybe that's just how you become a Faceless Man, you train until you are skilled enough to fight/survive in an impossible situation and live (In this case killing another Faceless Man). Then you start collecting faces and the more and more you take the less of you there is until you are No One.

And the Arya/Warg stuff seems to have been dropped from the show or I imagine it would have been introduced by now, same for Jon as well.

It might be reintroduced you never know.

Whooosh.

That was the sound of this conversation sucking the fun out of everything.

Ya'll are too much.

A small thing, but I really hope someone in the CGI team puts an orangutan knuckling round in the library somewhere.

I would laugh at that.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/andyneuenschwander/this-game-of-thrones-fan-may-have-discovered-jon-snows-real?bftw&utm_term=.jfABz19lb#.vsdNWbvej

 reds8n wrote:


I would laugh at that.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/andyneuenschwander/this-game-of-thrones-fan-may-have-discovered-jon-snows-real?bftw&utm_term=.jfABz19lb#.vsdNWbvej

Spoiler:

So now we know that Jon Snow is almost definitely the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, and not Ned Stark’s bastard. There’s a chance that Jon could be Robert Baratheon’s son, but where’s the fun in that?
But here’s a shocker: Lyanna whispers her son’s name to Ned, and while it’s hard to hear, the name she whispers is definitely NOT “Jon.”

“Lyanna starts by whispering ‘His name is,’ and then what follows appears to be a three syllable word that appears to start with a J,” wrote sparkledavisjr. “I’m not a great lip-reader, but I’m fairly certain what she says is Jaehaerys.”
The post explains why Jaehaerys would be the probable choice for a Targaryen offspring at the time, considering recent events.

Jaehaerys I was the 4th Targaryen king to sit the Iron Throne. He was known as ‘the Wise,’ ‘the Conciliator,’ and ‘the Old King.’ His long rule was prosperous and he was aided by his sister-wife Alysanne, who convinced Jaehaerys to expand the Night’s Watch and granted them the land now known as the New Gift.
Jaehaerys II was Jon’s great-grandfather. His reign was short due to his ill-health (only three years), but still a good one. Jaehaerys restored stability to the realm, ended the Blackfyre threat during the war of the Ninepenny kings, and improved relations with the major houses who were unhappy during his father’s rule (Aegon V — Egg, the brother of Maester Aemon).
If Lyanna was in love with Rhaegar (as seems likely), it makes sense for their son to have a Targaryen traditional name like his siblings Aegon and Rhaenys. Jaehaerys would be a good pick as the name isn’t associated with any real negative connotations, like Aerys, Maegor, etc.

Seems like a possibility, though this doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…

If I recall correctly:

 cincydooley wrote:
Whooosh.

That was the sound of this conversation sucking the fun out of everything.

Ya'll are too much.

The hell is that supposed to mean? Who are you even talking to?

In the context of the show and the fact that Jon is now acclaimed as a Stark and King in the North - why would it matter about his actual father to anyone?

Dragons will eat Targaryians so that does not give him immunity to them.

I enjoyed much of the Faceless Man stuff up until the last bit - it was however a very long winded (so exactly like the majority of the books) way to just give her ninja powers.

I think the show tried to avoid all the Starks having awesome super powers like in the books along with their magic wolves and went for just "Exposition" Bran having them.

On the subject of Bran - unless they go for him altering the past - trying to work out what the point of his powers are apart from exposition? What does a "three eyed raven" actually do?

We thought that he was going to chat to Sansa re the god trees but that didn't happen

Is it likely that is he goes South of the wall - the wall's anti white walker shields fail as he is marked?

 Mr Morden wrote:
What does a "three eyed raven" actually do?

win with an unfair advantage ?

 Mr Morden wrote:
In the context of the show and the fact that Jon is now acclaimed as a Stark and King in the North - why would it matter about his actual father to anyone?

Dragons will eat Targaryians so that does not give him immunity to them.

I enjoyed much of the Faceless Man stuff up until the last bit - it was however a very long winded (so exactly like the majority of the books) way to just give her ninja powers.

I think the show tried to avoid all the Starks having awesome super powers like in the books along with their magic wolves and went for just "Exposition" Bran having them.

On the subject of Bran - unless they go for him altering the past - trying to work out what the point of his powers are apart from exposition? What does a "three eyed raven" actually do?

We thought that he was going to chat to Sansa re the god trees but that didn't happen

Is it likely that is he goes South of the wall - the wall's anti white walker shields fail as he is marked?

With the show, Targaryen blood might actually matter a bit more. (Plus it'd be awesome to see a dragon bow to Jon).

I like the theory that Bran wargs back and does some other things (possibly being all of the Brans, such as Bran the Builder, which is why Old Nan confuses them).

With the show, Targaryen blood might actually matter a bit more. (Plus it'd be awesome to see a dragon bow to Jon).

I like the theory that Bran wargs back and does some other things (possibly being all of the Brans, such as Bran the Builder, which is why Old Nan confuses them).

The show has shown they are reasonably intelligent so I am not convinced that the Targaryen blood will matter that much - they love Dany as their mother and Tryion chatted them up / freed.

We know little about how the Valarians got them and kept them on their side but they were also happy to eat them in the civil wars so the bloodline doesn't give one immunity.

Do we know what sex the three Dragons are? I know Dany has named them after male family figures but if there are only males that's not ideal

re Bran - Wasn't he specifically told not to meddle in the past but then telling him not to do something is a good way of insuring he does it! It's the old - what is the attraction of my forbidden closet of mysteries (Simpsons), or telling a girl that X guy is not for her - forbidden doomed love............

 Mr Morden wrote:

With the show, Targaryen blood might actually matter a bit more. (Plus it'd be awesome to see a dragon bow to Jon).

I like the theory that Bran wargs back and does some other things (possibly being all of the Brans, such as Bran the Builder, which is why Old Nan confuses them).

The show has shown they are reasonably intelligent so I am not convinced that the Targaryen blood will matter that much - they love Dany as their mother and Tryion chatted them up / freed.

We know little about how the Valarians got them and kept them on their side but they were also happy to eat them in the civil wars so the bloodline doesn't give one immunity.

Do we know what sex the three Dragons are? I know Dany has named them after male family figures but if there are only males that's not ideal

re Bran - Wasn't he specifically told not to meddle in the past but then telling him not to do something is a good way of insuring he does it! It's the old - what is the attraction of my forbidden closet of mysteries (Simpsons), or telling a girl that X guy is not for her - forbidden doomed love............

Dragons are asexual, though I'm not sure if that tidbit came from the books, or show.

So they are like that species of lizard that reproduces via parthenogenesis? Then why do they look different? Asexual reproduction is basically natural cloning, iirc.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
So they are like that species of lizard that reproduces via parthenogenesis? Then why do they look different? Asexual reproduction is basically natural cloning, iirc.

Magic.

Don't fall into the trap of trying to scientifically explain something in a fantasy story, especially when the existence of this thing is directly correlated to the strength of magic in the world.

Arya's new business venture...

Did anyone else think that Lady Mormont stole the whole show? I hope her character comes back next season.

Do we have only one season left?

It appears that too many plot lines were being tied together at once. I expected that as characters a\re amalgamated into converging plot threads, as the writers have an excuse to simplify the book metaplot having now eclipsed it and gainsed permission to diverge from the written story.

I think that while episode 10 was excellent it was also rushed. I would have been happier if HBO made 11 or 12 episodes, with episode 10 being split two or three ways, it would have been more consistently paced I think and the majority of the costs for ten episodes would not extend to twelve and you can keep all the action, spread over mire time and just add more dialogue and light background scenes.

Cersei's nuke, Dany sailing west and Jon Snows ascension to power could all have been episode enders, or even series enders in their own right.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jasper76 wrote:
Did anyone else think that Lady Mormont stole the whole show? I hope her character comes back next season.

Spoiler:

The Mormonts are deservedly on the rise, being valued key support for the two main endgame players for the Iron Throne. She is just a kid and hasn't married yet and time is on her side. She could well be queen of Westeros one day, got the talent and the connexions.

Two 'abbreviated' season left.

Not sure how many episodes that means for Seasons 7 and 8, but maybe...6 each?

Certainly no less than 5 each, and hopefully more!

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Arya's new business venture...

In all seriousness, I don't think Arya is headed for a good ending. She's too far down a dark path. Remember the Ghost of High Heart's reaction to her?

And this quote from Jon to Arya (about her sewing) seems like it might be relevant...

You’ll be sewing all through winter. When the spring thaw comes, they will find your body with a needle still locked tight between your frozen fingers.