Game of Thrones

I'd argue that the Unsullied would have had no problems with a tight shield formation and using their spears offensively, that's how spears are meant to be used when paired with a shield. Most spears are primarily thrusting weapons and do poorly when used like a sword and swung about, can you do that, sure but you're not likely to do more than inflict minor wounds. Against a well trained force, like the Unsullied, a bunch of dagger armed thugs should have had no chance in hell, the SoH would have to try to close in very close in order to get within knife/dagger range which would give the Unsullied plenty of opportunities to run them through with their spears. Lets also not forget those shields, a dagger/knife is not going to get around shield wall and if they try they're going to get a face full of shield.

In general, I agree, but I think the Harpy guys had enough men to ultimately overwhelm the Unsullied. The other part of the equation is that they might win the initial fight, but if more Harpy guys show up, they're screwed. Eventually they could end up overwhelmed.

I mean, look, any way you slice it, the Unsullied came off REALLY badly except for Grey Worm. They're supposed to be badasses and they come across like wusses instead, while the Harpy guys come across as badasses precisely because of the dagger vs. spear-and-shield power differential. The way the show made it look to me, though, the Unsullied would eventually have been overwhelmed even if they'd gone into formation, and their weapons aren't as useful for offensive combat in the tight confines of the streets.


Lastly, I totally agree with the Dany in Iraq storyline, it's on the boring side and really stretched out. I think that Goerge RR Martin gets too caught in certain story/plot lines and, like certain directors, just doesn't know how to edit his work and trim the fat and make the story flow. He was doing fine until book 4, with books 4 & 5 he really got too caught up in the world that he had created and seemed to be more focused on showing us this world rather than moving the story forward.

I get the point of the storyline. It's basically about teaching Dany what it means to rule, and bringing her to a place where she's willing to abandon peace and use war to take what she wants. She's the blood of the dragon, after all, and of Aegon the Conqueror. She's in Mereen to grow the **** up, basically, and recognize that politics requires compromise, and warfare requires ruthlessness and brutality. Fire and blood. I think the next book will showcase Dany as far more of a warrior than a liberator. She'll still liberate people where she can, but her primary purpose will be focused back on getting to Westeros and taking her ****ing throne there through fire and blood.

The thing is, she'll still have to grow past that, and ultimately, that's what Mereen teaches. Conquest is easy. Ruling is hard. It's doubly hard when you don't understand the culture you're trying to rule. And that brings up an interesting bit about Dany -- she'll never FULLY understand Westeros, because she didn't really grow up there. She'll always be a bit alien to the place, and it will mean that her rule of Westeros -- if she ends up ruling at all -- will be....difficult, much like it as in Mereen. She'll need people by her side who can also support her and guide her AS EQUALS. The dragon, after all, has three heads.

In a way, Dany's path in the book -- while certainly overlong and bloated -- takes her to the same place that Jon ultimately needs to go where he learns to "Kill the boy so that the man might live." Both Jon and Dany want an easier life, but that life is the life of a child. Doubly so, in their more brutal, demanding world. Both need to learn to embrace their true nature, and both struggle with their perceived obligations.

Ultimately, I suspect that Jon and Dany will come together to unite Westeros, but they'll have to undergo serious change to do so, and to rule it successfully after the fact. Their paths actually mirror each other, in a way. Both fell in love with a "barbarian" and learned to respect their culture. Both fell into roles that probably weren't appropriate for them (Dany as Queen of Mereen, Jon as Lord Commander). Both ultimately leave these roles (Jon with a knife in his back, Dany on a dragon's back). I suspect we'll see both end up ultimately fighting for the same throne and eventually joining with each other. If they win the war and rule together, they'll need Jon's Stark tendencies towards justice to leaven their respective Targaeryan tendencies to violence and conquest. But it'll be interesting seeing how they get there.
 
I get the point of the storyline. It's basically about teaching Dany what it means to rule, and bringing her to a place where she's willing to abandon peace and use war to take what she wants. She's the blood of the dragon, after all, and of Aegon the Conqueror. She's in Mereen to grow the **** up, basically, and recognize that politics requires compromise, and warfare requires ruthlessness and brutality. Fire and blood. I think the next book will showcase Dany as far more of a warrior than a liberator. She'll still liberate people where she can, but her primary purpose will be focused back on getting to Westeros and taking her ****ing throne there through fire and blood.

The thing is, she'll still have to grow past that, and ultimately, that's what Mereen teaches. Conquest is easy. Ruling is hard. It's doubly hard when you don't understand the culture you're trying to rule. And that brings up an interesting bit about Dany -- she'll never FULLY understand Westeros, because she didn't really grow up there. She'll always be a bit alien to the place, and it will mean that her rule of Westeros -- if she ends up ruling at all -- will be....difficult, much like it as in Mereen. She'll need people by her side who can also support her and guide her AS EQUALS. The dragon, after all, has three heads.

In a way, Dany's path in the book -- while certainly overlong and bloated -- takes her to the same place that Jon ultimately needs to go where he learns to "Kill the boy so that the man might live." Both Jon and Dany want an easier life, but that life is the life of a child. Doubly so, in their more brutal, demanding world. Both need to learn to embrace their true nature, and both struggle with their perceived obligations.

Ultimately, I suspect that Jon and Dany will come together to unite Westeros, but they'll have to undergo serious change to do so, and to rule it successfully after the fact. Their paths actually mirror each other, in a way. Both fell in love with a "barbarian" and learned to respect their culture. Both fell into roles that probably weren't appropriate for them (Dany as Queen of Mereen, Jon as Lord Commander). Both ultimately leave these roles (Jon with a knife in his back, Dany on a dragon's back). I suspect we'll see both end up ultimately fighting for the same throne and eventually joining with each other. If they win the war and rule together, they'll need Jon's Stark tendencies towards justice to leaven their respective Targaeryan tendencies to violence and conquest. But it'll be interesting seeing how they get there.

Agreed, but I think that Martin just has an overly long winded way of going about things so instead of lesson(s) learned we get chapter after chapter of Dany in Iraq that goes on for so long that we end up losing sight of why she's there (in an overall narrative stance) in the first place. In the end I think it's going to be all about the White Walkers, no matter who finally ends up on the throne they're going to work with all of the surviving characters to deal with the White Walkers, unless that's another red herring/forgotten plot line.
 
Agreed, but I think that Martin just has an overly long winded way of going about things so instead of lesson(s) learned we get chapter after chapter of Dany in Iraq that goes on for so long that we end up losing sight of why she's there (in an overall narrative stance) in the first place. In the end I think it's going to be all about the White Walkers, no matter who finally ends up on the throne they're going to work with all of the surviving characters to deal with the White Walkers, unless that's another red herring/forgotten plot line.

Oh, I very much doubt that the Others are a red herring. They'll become a major issue in the coming books, I think, and arguably will be the only thing that truly unites the Seven Kingdoms. But after they're defeated...what then? How is the realm to be ruled? And who leads the war against them?


As for the rest...yeah, I heartily agree. I appreciate that Martin takes his time in developing things, but while I love a long-winded tale, his story seems to lose focus at times and wander. It could be MUCH tighter in terms of how it's handled. That said, I did read an essay series recently that got me thinking maybe I've been overly harsh about the Dany-in-Iraq story. Maybe the point is to make us feel the futility and drudgery and frustration because those chapters are told from Dany's POV. Ultimately, the two storyline's -- Dany's and Jon's -- are about their struggle between differing impulses that each of them has, and the point of their stories in the 5th book is to finally force them to choose after a natural progression of events that drive them to it. Thus, their character changes become more gradual and acceptable rather than abrupt.

The real problem, though, is how Martin ended (or rather DIDN'T end) Book 5. More and more, I find myself thinking that the 5th book, while more action-packed than the 4th, really was published in an "unfinished" state. It's nowhere near as self-contained as the previous books (although Book 4 suffers from this as well). The first three books, while interconnected, felt effective in how they dealt with character storylines. Where they end is at a new beginning, not at minutes-before-the-ending of a storyline introduced in the book. Books 4 and 5, though, came across far more as abrupt endings, like writing a long post that doesn't--
 
Toward the end of Book 5, it's implied that she's been taking the witch-woman's "curse" too literally and it's more of a prophecy. After Drogon flies off with her and she sets her mind to taking over the approaching Khalasar, her period starts, implying that she is, indeed, still fertile, but her body was probably healing from the trauma of miscarrying.

The woman's words were: When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.

Of course, Dany's kind of stupid and assumed that the woman was saying that Drogo would never return to her because of course, the sun doesn't rise in the west and set in the east.... However, the sigil of House Martell is a sun bisected by a spear, and Quenten Martell who comes to try to forge an alliance with her "rises" in the west and "sets" in the east when he stupidly gets killed by Dany's dragons.

Long story short (TOO LATE), she's not barren. Just too literal-minded at times.

HA! Good, that worked. :)
 
The one thing that we need to remember (and which I repeatedly forget) is that all of the chapters in the books are told from a particular character's point of view, including all of the narration. That means every observation, every description, etc., it's all from that character's perspective, rather than an omniscient narrator. The entire series is an exercise in multiple unreliable narrators, and it's very easy to mistake their observations for objective truth.

I think I'm actually going to have to go back and re-read the books at some point with this in mind (and written down in big block letters next to me...) to see just how much I misunderstood as I read.

I think Martin does a lot in the books that conveys actual truth, but does so using unreliable narration, which is...actually seriously badass and (I expect) difficult to do. Like, how do you SHOW the reader the truth while TELLING them a filtered, interpreted version of it?
 
I think Martin does a lot in the books that conveys actual truth, but does so using unreliable narration, which is...actually seriously badass and (I expect) difficult to do. Like, how do you SHOW the reader the truth while TELLING them a filtered, interpreted version of it?

I believe there's a portion of a reason for why these damn books take so long to come out.
 
I believe there's a portion of a reason for why these damn books take so long to come out.

You mean aside from the procrastination, taking time off to serve as editor for the Wild Card series, writing Dunk & Egg, and the coffee table book for A Song of Ice and Fire, and don't mention writing the odd episode for the show here and there.
 
You mean aside from the procrastination, taking time off to serve as editor for the Wild Card series, writing Dunk & Egg, and the coffee table book for A Song of Ice and Fire, and don't mention writing the odd episode for the show here and there.

Yes, naturally aside from those. :lol
 
You mean aside from the procrastination, taking time off to serve as editor for the Wild Card series, writing Dunk & Egg, and the coffee table book for A Song of Ice and Fire, and don't mention writing the odd episode for the show here and there.

At least he declined to write for season 5 so he could concentrate on finishing the books.
 
I haven't read the books but have a question about the White Walkers. In tonight's episode Jon Snow said, "The Walkers are coming and we don't have much time" - it seems like even since the opening shot of the pilot, the White Walkers were steadily moving towards the wall - but would they BE there by now after 5 seasons? I mean, do they march, turn around, rest up, go back, and then head back towards the wall. I guess I'm a little confused on geography, pacing, and timing - it seemed like they were on a continual progressive march.
 
I haven't read the books but have a question about the White Walkers. In tonight's episode Jon Snow said, "The Walkers are coming and we don't have much time" - it seems like even since the opening shot of the pilot, the White Walkers were steadily moving towards the wall - but would they BE there by now after 5 seasons? I mean, do they march, turn around, rest up, go back, and then head back towards the wall. I guess I'm a little confused on geography, pacing, and timing - it seemed like they were on a continual progressive march.

I believe they're restricted to the cold. So as winter starts and the cold moves south, the walkers move with it.
 
And it's important not to confuse the Others with the shambling frozen zombies they create. The Others seem to possess some hidden agenda and are definitely intelligent. They're waiting for winter to fully come. At least in the books they haven't made a full on assault yet.

But then again, the next book will be called "The winds of winter" so that's an indication of events to come.
 
I think they may be gathering an army of the dead in preparation.

Supposedly the wall is magical. Cold Hands (who's character looks like it will never be in the show considering it would have been last season) had been unable to cross the wall

Likewise the Walkers may be waiting or trying to force a breach in the wall. They may have been purposely driving the wildings south to keep the night's watch busy while at the same tie swelling the ranks of their zombie horde and preparing for another way south (via Hardhome and the sea possibly)

I also wonder if the White Walkers are the drivers of winter or not. Maybe they somehow control the elements which make it last for years and decades sometimes

Since Jorah has contracted grey scale and is piloting Tyrion alone, I guess that means we won't be seeing Old Griff
 
Ahh, okay, cool - thanks guys, makes sense… There were just all these shots of them walking, and I was a little unclear on where they were headed...
 
Correct, the others are the race of ice and snow loving beings beyond the wall. The wildlings call them the "White Walkers"

Among other powers, they have the ability to reanimate the dead (humans and animals) as "wights"

Supposedly we will be seeing a bit more glimpses of the The Others/White Walkers this season
 
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