CoolCly posted... Also wtf how could you all not have realized that guy was Mance. I thought those kickass sidekick girls of his kinda gave him away.
Not to mention the letter to Jon saying that Bolton had Mance. I thought that pretty much made it official and removed any doubt.
I love The Hound but I'm okay with him never showing up again. He's at a good point to end his arc, and I'm afraid if he gets dragged back into things it will just be to die.
-- (Maniac64 at work) Guns don't kill people, Kinder eggs do. I saw it in a post on GameFAQs. ~FAHtastic
It's not something you're supposed to be able to figure out instantly, but it's definitely something you should have figured out by the last Theon chapter
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Kill every suspect, starting at one end. The one left standing is your culprit.
I don't know if this link will work - I'm on my phone - but if it does it's an interesting theory. How it would play onto anything is unclear, but still fun to think about.
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"SMOKEDOG42O taught me how to feel love, but fetus taught me how to make love." - Pablo Escobar
The absence of Jon seems like somewhat of an oversight too. Sure, he's a Snow rather than a Stark, but his direwolf cements him as "one of the family" imo.
LIKE A BOSS. Poking fun at the future Lord Commander, and bastard son of the Warden of the North. Sam has nothing if not balls.
... but only sometimes. Sam's a coward, a craven, an obese ****er, and any number of things that suck. "Have you heard the one about Samwell Tarly's giant dongzor?", Dolorous Edd once asked over dinner. "No," said another guy. "Neither has any woman in Westeros."
Then they gave each other high fives for, like, a day straight.
So yeah, Sam's kind of a total wimp, but then he up and ****ing kills an Other. Like, the first dude to do that in about 8,000 years. He just does it, no big deal, just helping out, saw there was an Other there so he killed it. Shrug it off and keep on walking toward the Wall. And then he's awesome enough to take in a woman and her baby and protect them through absolutely ridiculous circumstances. Taking them across the Narrow Sea? I wouldn't take my best friend across the Narrow Sea, much less some crazy depressed wildling woman and her squalling baby. But that's what separates Samwell Tarly from a craven such as myself.
That and he's just plain funny sometimes. His cowardice and reserve are really entertaining to read in contrast to Jon Snow's (and nearly everybody else in the books) super cereal demeanor.
Is anybody else curious about that whole, like, eternal candle ****? I want to know what's up with that.
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"SMOKEDOG42O taught me how to feel love, but fetus taught me how to make love." - Pablo Escobar
Yeah, one of my major disappointments with ADWD is that the Oldtown subplots were completely ignored. Like, no Sam obviously cut it down, but I wanted some Dany/Marwyn action too.
So I watch the first season of GoT and I love it. It is just the best show. So good. And as a result I start reading these books, and when I do and I get to a Sansa chapter I dread it. The feeling in my guts at this point isn't that dissimilar from the feeling when you're at the top of one of those rides at an amusement park where you strap in and it raises you up this pole and then holds you there for a minute or so before it drops you. The feeling of, "Augh, what have I gotten myself into? Is this going to be worth it?"
And for a while, at least, the Sansa chapters aren't. Well, at least not the first time I read them. At first I would think that Sansa's a stupid prissy little girl who's super-emotional and has no idea what the hell's going on around her. But then I started to like her chapters because they were the only view we had into the events unfolding inside of King's Landing. But then I started to like her chapters because they were her chapters. Because Sansa is awesome.
I mean check this: Sansa is a prissy little girl. She's the daughter of a Lord, but not just any Lord, Ned ****ing Stark, the Warden of the North and the best friend of the King. So she's used to living with certain amenities. She probably had, like, silk everything. And so her dad gets killed and she might get tried for treason and her entire family is who the **** knows where, but what does she do? She keeps her cool and learns to pay attention to what's going on around her. She desperately wants out because **** the Lannisters, they killed her ****ing dad, but she's not stupid about it. She realizes that she's a prissy little girl and she uses that to her advantage. She doesn't make a dash for it; she comes up with a plan and sticks to it and does a damn good job.
So yadda yadda her plan wasn't actually entirely hers (right?) and she eventually gets taken in by Littlefinger (this was another HOLY **** AWESOME moment for me) and now they're hanging out with that awful little creature Robert Arryn, owning The Vale and generally plotting a bunch of **** because **** the Lannisters, they killed her ****ing dad.
tl;dr: Sansa gets a lot of crap for being a wimpy lady but she's actually full of guts and balls and intelligence and I love her for it.
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"SMOKEDOG42O taught me how to feel love, but fetus taught me how to make love." - Pablo Escobar
Sansa is definitely growing as a character... and not just in 'that' way. I hope she grows to be a master plotter like Littlefinger, and win back the North.
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Sansa's one of my most hated characters in the first book, but she's so awesome from book 2 onward in her own way. Really looking forward to her role in the final 2 books.
-- James - Board 8's Resident Warm And Safe, Slipper-Wearing User & The Cream of Porcupine Tree Fanboyism
The interesting thing about Sansa from this point on, at least to me, is both her capacity to learn and her opportunity to learn from the failures of others. She has pretty much witnessed first hand some of the biggest slip-ups on both ends of the spectrum - people with too much honor getting screwed by it, people with no honor getting what was coming to them. Hopefully she benefits from this and tries to take a balance between the two if she becomes a major 'plotter' type character. Another thing is how quickly she was forced to mature and, as a result, where her priorities lay compared to a lot of others. This was really apparent in the scenes featuring Margaery and co. when they come to King's Landing and Sansa is like 'holy hell that used to be me'. One reoccuring theme of this series is that the young and foolish make a lot of mistakes but I think because of Sansa's circumstances she gets around that hurdle as well.
imo she has some of the highest potential for surviving to the end of the series outside of the plot armor characters.
“Never forget who you are, for surely the world won’t. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.” -Tyrion Lannister
Yeah... Tyrion. Number 14.
Tyrion. Tyrion, Tyrion, Tyrion.
Now, I just want to say this: Tyrion is my 14th favorite character in a saga which has dozens of major players and hundreds of minor players. Him being 14th isn't a slam on the little dude by any means. But...
Alright, here's the true facts. Tyrion was completely awesome in the first two books. He was clever, he was charming, he was devious... he was all the normal Tyrion crap. Then the Battle on the Blackwater came. And don't get me wrong, I completely love the Battle on the Blackwater. It's probably my favorite part of the entire series up to this point. Like, 7 or 8 chapters devoted to this dope-ass battle with ships and pyromancers and trebuchets? Holy **** yes, count me in. And when Tyrion rode into battle (LIKE A BOSS) I was totally cheering for him. The chapter where he was slicing dudes down is one of my favorites in the entire series so far. But then...
Afterwards...
Tyrion turns dark. And that's to be expected, to a certain extent. If you or I were a dwarf and had slowly learned to come to terms with our permanent disfigurement, we probably wouldn't welcome yet another, yet alone one so obvious.
So Tyrion loses his nose and some of the rest of his face and comes into sort of a malaise, which is cool. Don't get me wrong, I'd be in the same exact malaise. I like my face. It does me good. But losing a nose? **** that ****.
Yadda yadda yadda, Tyrion kills his dad, runs off to another continent, becomes a slave, meets another dwarf, hangs out with Jorah Mormont, almost gets killed in a gladiator's pit, etc.. But none of that stuff really matters when it comes to how much I like Tyrion.
I like Tyrion because he's one of the most dynamic and interesting characters I've ever read in fiction. He's clearly well-adapted to high society, but in A Dance With Dragons he's also equally well-adapted to living as a slave. He's very, very, smart, and he knows when to hold his cards. He knows that the deck is stacked against him and so he has to be smart about his plays. And he nearly always is.
The Tyrion Lannister.
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"SMOKEDOG42O taught me how to feel love, but fetus taught me how to make love." - Pablo Escobar
Very good choice. I do think Tyrion is one of the better POV characters, but goes down for his last book, and the best characters are always the ones you can't get into the heads of, like the real power players in the jame of thrones.
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Also, fun note: I hear people online saying all "Oh man, you like Tyrion? Wait until clash, it's just Tyrion dominating everyone!"
Really? He gets outplayed by Littlefinger, does everything Varys wants him to, he at best fights to a draw with Cersei, and ends up completely removes from power... sure, he has disadvantages and poor circumstances, but you would think we learned by now.
Tyrion is smart but not quite as smart as he thinks he is, though we're often biased from reading his point of view. And in Clash, he plays the game, gets outplayed, and loses.
-- "Shut up and put your tinfoil hat back on." - Ulti
You've responded to me about Tyrion/ACoK before because I said he owns ACoK, but not that he dominates everyone. By that I mean he gets the most screentime and is consistenly an awesome character, which is true. He's the one guy in King's Landing who schemes for the good of the kingdom despite the fact that everyone hates him.
Probably forgetting something obvious, but when's he outplayed by Littlefinger? Tyrion's perfectly set up, until he actually decides to participate in the Blackwater himself. When he plays the game of thrones I'd say he does pretty damn well, especially given that he wasn't "playing" it in the same way that Cersei and the others were. They're trying to consolidate their own power, Tyrion's actually trying to protect the people as well. When he does play the game (for example the business with Pycelle) he does pretty damn well out of it, I'd say. It's just that time spent under the milk of the poppy when Tywin's back and all his manoeuvring is undone in a matter of days.
-- James - Board 8's Resident Warm And Safe, Slipper-Wearing User & The Cream of Porcupine Tree Fanboyism
From: AlecTrevelyan006 | #176 ends up completely removes from power
Tywin only made Tyrion acting Hand in the first place until he returned. Unless he had been willing to muster up an all out war against his father or hire an assassin to kill him before his return, there isn't much he could have done about that.
he at best fights to a draw with Cersei
No, he completely owns her until Tywin returns.
He gets outplayed by Littlefinger
Only in getting framed for Joffrey's murder. I'd like to see anyone do better with that much conspiracy going on.
does everything Varys wants him to
The only reason I'll agree that is because as of ADwD's epilogue, you could say that they basically want the same things anyways.
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"One toot on this whistle will take you to a far away land." -Toad, SMB3
From: EndOfDiscOne | #177 You've responded to me about Tyrion/ACoK before because I said he owns ACoK, but not that he dominates everyone. By that I mean he gets the most screentime and is consistenly an awesome character, which is true. He's the one guy in King's Landing who schemes for the good of the kingdom despite the fact that everyone hates him.
While you may have been the motivation behind one of my responses in the past, I have seen more and more of the deification of Tyrion as we approach the second season.
I think Tyrion is a fascinating character, largely because he is a very flawed character (what a surprise in these novels). One of those flaws is his ego. He's always taken pride in his intelligence, as he believes that that is all he has. Unfortunately, his confidence in his intelligence is not always for the best.
From: Eeeevil Overlord | #178 When he does play the game (for example the business with Pycelle) he does pretty damn well out of it, I'd say. It's just that time spent under the milk of the poppy when Tywin's back and all his manoeuvring is undone in a matter of days.
Yes, he plays the game well in a few instances. But ultimately, he loses.
Sure, it was always a temporary position. Of course, people are predisposed to hate him. And you can say he "succeeds" in that he saves the city.
But "you win or you die". You have to look at the long term results of Tyrion's tenure in King's Landing.
Character by character... JUST looking at clash.
LITTLEFINGER: Tyrion pisses him off with the bait and switch on Harrenhall. Littlefinger gets it anyways, along with a substantial amount of credit for saving the city. Plus, Tyrion's "secret weapon" against Cersei, the Kettleblacks, are actually Tyrion's men. And he has a patsy in to make sure his plot to abscond with Sansa is all set up. Littlefinger clearly benefits at Tyrion's expense. Again, that's just looking at Clash of Kings.
VARYS: Tyrion even admits that he is just replacing Littlefinger's men with Varys' and that he is overdependent on the eunuch. Varys feeds him what he needs to in the book, and plays everyone. This becomes even more clear later. "Oh wow, Jaime was able to surprise Varys in his own chambers, that sounds legit"
CERSEI: Cersei manages to get a Kingsguard knight to take out Tyrion. That's part of the game too. Up until then, he manages to curb a few of Joff's actions, and he takes out a few informers, but in the end, it is CERSEI'S move that takes Tyrion out of the action. He may have been doing well in the war of attrition, but she won the big battle and the "war".
Hell, even Pycelle ends up back on the council to end the book, and Pycelle was a Lannister patsy all along. So while he revealed that Pycelle was selling him out to Cersei, what good did that really do?
Tyrion played. Tyrion played better than most. And circumstances were against him. But those circumstances are part of the game. He uses the advantages of his high birth and family power to his benefit, while being a dwarf and having other family members being problematic is a disadvantage. And in the end, the three major players in king's landing came out ahead at Tyrion's expense to end clash, and it only went downhill from there.
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Luster: Yeah, that's the most intense method of consuming cocaine.
From: AlecTrevelyan006 | #180 Cersei manages to get a Kingsguard knight to take out Tyrion.
And if Cersei hadn't manuevered complete incompetents into the Kingsguard prior to the start of the books, she might have had someone who wouldn't have gotten killed by f***ing Podrick Payne.
And Tyrion being out of action was completely irrelevant. Tywin had the upper hand regardless.
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"One toot on this whistle will take you to a far away land." -Toad, SMB3
Yet even if Tywin hadn't taken the seat (let's say he went right off to fight Robb), Cersei would have been in full control. So it's irrelevant that Tywin showed up and took control. Cersei would have taken control from Tyrion on her own.
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"Link has spoken for years. And music is his language" -YoBlazer
From: AlecTrevelyan006 | #182 Yet even if Tywin hadn't taken the seat (let's say he went right off to fight Robb), Cersei would have been in full control. So it's irrelevant that Tywin showed up and took control. Cersei would have taken control from Tyrion on her own.
And he could have just as easily gotten it back again. If AFfC taught us anything, it's that Cersei sucks at wielding power.
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"One toot on this whistle will take you to a far away land." -Toad, SMB3
Tyrion did about as well as a PoV character can. Honestly, he failed because of plot advancement, rather than making any really avoidable mistakes.
14 is a lot lower than I would've ranked him, but he definitely became decreasingly interesting after killing Tywin. I'm interested to see who the top 5 or so are going to be; most of mine have already been listed!
1. Tywin Lannister 2. Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish 3. Jaime Lannister 4. Stannis Baratheon (Because he is awesome) 5. Barristan "The Bold" Selmy
Davos, Jon Snow, Arya, and Sandor Clegane would probably be in my top ten as well, but I have no idea who the tenth would be. Tyrion, Rhaegar, Doran Martell, Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Jon Connington and Qhorin Halfhand are all pretty high up there.
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I'm really liking all the Stannis support lately. No one seemed to like him much before ADwD, and then he was especially awesome in the TWoW preview. I always thought his lines were great.
Stannis is great because he does what he does out of duty. When everyone else is pushed by personal desire, Stannis is doing what he does for the realm, even if no one else can accept it. I think he'd be a great king, honestly.
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Eh, he's too unpersonable to make a great king. An excellent dictator, sure, if he could amass that kind of power, but he's too strictly correct and arrogant to have the support of a realm.
I'm coming down with some sort of illness, so I'll probably have a bunch of free time on my hands these next few days. Awful sore throats ftw, right? Riiiiiiight?
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"SMOKEDOG42O taught me how to feel love, but fetus taught me how to make love." - Pablo Escobar
The two most up for interpretation, in my opinion, are "A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly" and "From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire."
Grey lips smiling sadly doesn't sound like a Greyjoy to me... I'd lean towards Connington. His presumed death "corpse", and worsening greyscale fits the rest pretty well. Of course I suppose it could be more of a literal corpse, any wight would fit the description well if they were sentient (Coldhands maybe?) Though, I suppose the ship element does lean back towards Victarion.
The smoking tower though... that's vague. I'm not sure I like the theories involving stone dragons - Daenerys knows what a dragon looks like, why would it be described as a beast? Perhaps Catelyn Stark as Stoneheart? Certainly stone, and somewhat of a beast, though the shadow part and smoking tower are hard to explain. Blackfyre? Black Flame (Moqorro as named by Victarion's crew)?
It seems like no matter how they're interpreted there are some elements unexplained.
I've read tons of theories as to the "Stone Dragon". Some sort of Targaryen could get greyscale. It could be Aegon, though his identity is heavily questioned: real or fake? Blackfyre? Illyrio's kid? etc etc
A hall to die in, and men to bury me. I am a knight! I shall die a knight! Even now, I could cut through the five of you like carving a cake! Here, boy! Melt it down and add it to the others! -Barristan Selmy, being very bold.
Selmy is all about honor and duty. He's two-thirds of a Tully if you go by their motto. He's a knight, he wants to die a knight, and he can't imagine a better day than a full 24 hour period in which he's smiting his sworn leader's foes, one after the other, blood spattering his entire body, a rain of plasma blocking out the Sun, with him, Ser Barristan, laughing the entire time. "YES. BRING IT I SAY. HOW DARE YOU DEFY YOUR KING OR QUEEN?" he screams so loud the dying wails of the men around him become inaudible; his voice's timbre so low and permeating that had he been standing within 100 leagues of The Wall it would come tumbling down, killing thousands and drowning the kingdom in undead ice wights, plunging Westeros into an eternal slumber so deep that it is very unlikely to ever wake from it.
So that's what he'd like to be doing all day. And every so often he does chop dude's heads off. He killed Khrazz, after all, and Khrazz was, like, awesome.
I dunno, not much more to say about Barristan. I can't wait for the next book to see how much Yunkai ass he chops up.
The Barristan Selmy.
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"SMOKEDOG42O taught me how to feel love, but fetus taught me how to make love." - Pablo Escobar