HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

As far as the events off screen leading up to Sansa's arrival with the Vale... isn't it plausible to say that she was hanging out in base camp, the army shows up with LF, she says "they're fighting right now! quick!"- cut to them charging straight into the battlefield?

you know what i bet we'll probably found out how/why LF showed up in a few days

As far as the events off screen leading up to Sansa's arrival with the Vale... isn't it plausible to say that she was hanging out in base camp, the army shows up with LF, she says "they're fighting right now! quick!"- cut to them charging straight into the battlefield?

― Evan, Thursday, June 23, 2016 2:46 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's the simplest solution! She's hanging out at base camp contemplating suicide rather than risking that Ramsay takes her as his prisoner at the battle.

Nitpicking Ramsey's choice to shoot Wun Wun instead of Jon is weird, since a) we know Ramsey is a cruel motherfucker and killing the Giant in front of Jon is something he'd get off on and b) killing Jon would not have done him any good--his army was defeated and the gate breached. If he killed Jon he would just be torn apart by Jon's men. At least by keeping Jon, with his sense of honor and whatnot, alive he had a chance to live on as a prisoner--and probably would have if Sansa hadn't gotten to him.

Also, how often do you get to kill a giant?

why would littlefinger not send a message in reply to sansa's message? why is it plausible that his army would stumble across the base camp rather than the big battle with their side being massacred? such bizarre, needless contortions.

We see her sending a raven. We do not see her receiving a raven. That's what we know.

l feel the need to clarify that my problem with the show is not a few implausible moments or sketchy character motivations--i can live with those things to a degree, and every show has them--it's that almost without fail those lapses feel totally false even in the moment and not just when thinking about it later. it's totally possible to work your way backwards from just about anything that happens to make it "logical" (and most the explaining here is not accomplishing that for me) but there's no way to make it dramatically interesting in a lot of these cases. there are too many cheap "emotional" effects strung together in an almost mechanical fashion.

Obviously Bran warged into LF's return raven and sent it off course. He also warged into Rickon and made him run in a straight line. Why? Heel turn.

put another way, the seams show so clearly on this show simply because the drama is so inert.

That's not my issue. With so much at stake why not tell Jon - it's not just his like at risk, but maybe her position in the north. If littlefinger's involvement is in question, maybe Jon could help tip the balance? If it's certain, why not shore up her position by telling him and delaying the battle?

post your wun wun fan fic here

showing up at the last minute after Jon's forces have been markedly reduced definitely serves LF's ends more than anyone else's. if sansa told him about it, he might have deliberately shown up at the last minute -- he saves the day, Sansa/Jon owe him, and he takes no/few losses

I understand it dramatically, of course, by the show itself encourages a degree of nitpicky geekery.

He also mentions Bill Belichick in Dance with Dragons:
"...the fourth and final volume of The Life of the Triarch Belicho, a famous Volantene patriot whose unbroken succession of conquests and triumphs ended rather abruptly when he was eaten by giants."
This is referring to the New England Patriots' 2007 season, in which the Patriots went undefeated until losing in the Super Bowl to the New York Giants.

jfc

Obviously Bran warged into LF's return raven and sent it off course.

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Clearly Bran was too busy altering things in the past to waste time warging into birds. I mean, come on.

l feel the need to clarify that my problem with the show is not a few implausible moments or sketchy character motivations--i can live with those things to a degree, and every show has them--it's that almost without fail those lapses feel totally false even in the moment and not just when thinking about it later. it's totally possible to work your way backwards from just about anything that happens to make it "logical" (and most the explaining here is not accomplishing that for me) but there's no way to make it dramatically interesting in a lot of these cases. there are too many cheap "emotional" effects strung together in an almost mechanical fashion.

― ryan, Thursday, June 23, 2016 10:24 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

otm

think ramsay's death disappointed me because it was a little too conventionally poetically just - you know GRRM is for sure going to have something different cooked up for him, even if it ends up being lame in another way

i felt like jon snow punching him to death might have been enough.

tho ideally he'd have done that over his entire body, moving around and focussing on a different part until he had formed a resultant paste.

a final face-off between stone man jorah and paste man ramsay would be something to behold

would be cool if ramsay was like a 2d paper cutout after jon was finished with him.

the writers on this show have no imagination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSTL3AidX4o

Longneck otm

That's not my issue. With so much at stake why not tell Jon - it's not just his like at risk, but maybe her position in the north. If littlefinger's involvement is in question, maybe Jon could help tip the balance? If it's certain, why not shore up her position by telling him and delaying the battle?

― inside, skeletons are always inside, that's obvious. (dowd), Thursday, June 23, 2016 9:47 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because she doesn't know? This doesn't even seem like a nitpick it feels like you getting emotionally involved in the battle outcome and deciding that Sansa was Bad

Questionable assertion no 1
she must have had some advance knowledge of where they were and when to be able to meet up with them

Questionable assertion no 2, where the word "so" does an an insane amount of heavy lifting:
m. from her POV they did not just show up, and some amount of communication is implied since her first letter is implied. so she knew the extra force was coming and did not tell jon which could've influenced battle tactics and crucially timing.

I won't get to see the final episode until many days later, and it makes me so sad that I'll miss all this delightful nitpicking and nitpicking of the nitpicking. Sad!

The rest of that paragraph is a bunch of speculation that assumes you've drawn reasonable conclusions in those sentences which you haven't

If Sansa didn't write them, then who do you think that letter she wrote was for?

Sansa wrote to LF, the question is whether she received a reply before the battle

It's possible she had absolutely no faith in the Vale showing up at all. The thing is, they were so desperate you'd think she'd be driven to share that she asked LF for help, just to delay almost certain defeat (and therefore her suicide) by another day with their collective fingers and toes crossed that the Vale shows up. After waiting as long as they're able to, THEN they give the battle a shot anyway. Obviously they wouldn't be "allowed" to delay things but they could milk it, or Jon could have used the possible Vale intervention as leverage to threaten Ramsay and make his followers question their loyalty, which is something he is shown doing already but hinging on the "you fight for him would he fight for you" stuff. Conclusion for me is:

Narrative reason: dumb Sansa

Show reason: exciting surprise for audience just as they begin to think their heroes are surely done for

So... How did he find her if there wasn't further communication?

I would imagine he had some scouts ffs

Suspension of disbelief? Sansa shares info on where they will camp just outside of the designated battlefield? That camp happens to be en route to Winterfell?

he read the script, duh

There are several totally plausible and boring ways LF could have figured out where the battle was going to occur. It doesn't really matter how it happened.

How would Sansa know where they would camp? And why would the camp be on the route between the Vale and Winterfell? Sansa and Jon were coming from the other side.

Weren't they just outside of winterfell? Doesn't seem hard to "figure out." Ramsey rode on a horse with an entire army chasing him into the gate at winterfell from the battlefield...if the letter says "we need help at winterfell" there is exactly zero mystery how littlefinger found them u weirdos

No, Sansa's/Jon's camp. Sansa wasn't going to go to the battle with everyone. The camp could have been east of Winterfell. This is a pretty tiny nitpick.

xpost

Why must LF either stumble on the camp or be told by Sansa where it is? It's going to be close to Winterfell, where the battle of Winterfell is taking place. You can find a camp by sending a few guys up tall things and looking around.

"Dear Peter my brother's army of Wildlings and 62 House Mormont dudebros are riding to take Winterfell from the Boltons, we leave two days hence and will make camp at X." jfc

Maybe they went around Winterfell and came back towards where the army would logically camp (same place as Stannis did, so possibly a very obvious location)? Maybe they built a tunnel under winterfell? Who cares really, they just did it.

xxxp

no man this ruins everything

Littlefinger is coming from the exact opposite direction.

dude do you think he had to bring his entire army to the camp with him and attack from that direction?

they needed to rest after the journey, the camp is a decent spot

Like, a pretty big point of having a giant castle is that you control the area surrounding it. The idea that Ramsay would just sit and wait while the opposing army walked around to the very best spot to camp is stupid.

And we can go on and on and on and on and on.

And on.

And on.

The nitpicking around this show with the internet at large seems to labor on the fact that they don't show every single detail play out on screen. It's like that "where did the dogs go?" bullshit from earlier in the season. It takes no mental energy to fill in certain details that aren't explicitly shown. Sansa's motivations are more interesting than whether LF has scouts or binoculars at his disposal...