Deadlines? What Deadlines?

Huh, ASOIAF TV adaptation that subverts your expectations? Who ever heard of such a thing?

A sacrifice to the lord of light. "There is power in King's blood." Yeah, that's an awfully obvious thread to just leave hanging. That situation will come to a head soon I think.

Doing the Winterfell scenes anything like ADWD depicts would be an entire season unto itself. They are condensing an incredible amount of material into just ten hours of TV. I haven't agreed with all of their editorial decisions, but all in all, I'm enjoying the season. Snapping Theon out of his Reek persona needs to take time or it will seem incredibly contrived. Also, anything other than what we saw last night would have a segment of the fandom howling "See?!? Those bastards are torturing Sansa for the sake of Theon's character arc!!!" Theon is always going to be a figure of simultaneous sympathy and hatred. That reminds me: Mentioned this once before but I think it got lost in the flurry of comments last night. On the previous show thread there were several commenters that were making claims that Sansa's character would be so mishandled that within a few episodes she'd forget her wedding night trauma and by the end of the season she'd live "happily ever after". There were others who were screaming that they had in fact turned her into Jeyne and she's just there to develop Theon's character. After last night, does anyone think this is still the case?

While a lot of GOT actors have been recognized for their performances, Alfie Allen is consistently underrated as Theon/Reek IMO.

Pashernate Reader, on 24 May 2015 - 9:34 PM, said: There are a few obvious differences between Tyrion/Tysha and Sam/Gilly. Tysha was the "damsel in distress", Gilly was not exactly that. She's already experienced Crasters cruelty and seen Sam's courage. She even demands that he escape during the attack, he doesn't and gets beaten senseless for it. Tyrion and Tysha were strangers with almost zero history with each other. Sam saved Gilly during the mutiny at Crasters, they escaped south to the wall together, survived the wight attack and shared more than a few tender moments, including after the attack in this weeks episode. She has seen him kill for her. She knows he'd die for her. Oh, and if there was any doubt, it was established, like, at least 8 episodes ago that they are already in love with each other.

Y'know, I'm getting this funny feeling that coercion is an affirmative defense to perjury.

Maybe, but the High sparrow and the Faith Militant have demonstrated that they are humorless dicks when it comes to following the rules. Also, homophobia. That reminds me, the exchange between Olenna and the HS was fantastic.

One way or another, Sansa will not give birth to Ramsey's child.

That's awesome. He should move there.

To be clear, I'm not saying KL "toughened her up" or that she was prepared for Ramsey's brutality. I'm saying that prior to KL, she had little to no concept of the brutality of men or specifically the brutality of men against women. After KL, different story.

So, his gift is to convince Olyvar to admit to perjury after he's seen Marjery locked up for the same offense (at the same hearing)? That would spring Marg and Loras immediately, but I'd like to see how LF convinces him to do this.

Ramsey is a force of nature, taking pleasure primarily with dominating people through terror. If he was smart, he'd be kissing her feet, not keeping her locked in a room. Power politics is not his strong suit. The way they set it up in the show, it will be interesting to see how Roose reacts to the treatment of Sansa. In the books, he's somewhat indifferent, but in the books it's the northern lords that bend to him. In the show, he's genuinely worried about them uniting against him. Rumors of Ramsey brutalizing the last daughter of Eddard Stark could see the marriage of political convenience backfire spectacularly.

He mentions Jon Snow during their back and forth about bastards. She implies he can't inherit if Walda's child is a boy (that was naughty of her), the Ramsey was legitimize by a bastard himself. Ramsey counters with the brute fact that the bastard of Winterfell is now LC demonstrating bastards can rise very high. I though that was clear. Lancel is not a boy. He's bigger than I am for crissakes.

I disagree. This is worse but Joffrey's torments were not minor. Neither were Cerise's for that matter. Although Cerise's interactions with Sansa are really complicated in those episodes. There are times where she seems to show a glimmer of sympathy toward her, and others where she just seems really cruel. I'm thinking of the talk they had after her "flowering" and the dinner scene where Cersei flashed Sansa an evil look for not acknowledging some question from princess Myrcella. The scene at court where Trant beats her while Joff is taunting her with a crossbow is still troubling to me if I'm honest. Seeing her fathers head on a spike is pretty brutal as well. I think prior to KL, she was not only younger but also much more sheltered from the brutal realities of that world. Side comment: There seems to be a population of book readers that have a lot of disdain for Sansa in the books and I think they tend to forget just how young she is. I read a lot of those comments and it seems to me that might make sense if we are talking about an adult but this is a barely pubescent child we're talking about.

It's established in that scene that Ramsey keeps her locked in that room. We even see Reek have to put down the food tray to fish for the key to open the door. We hear Reek lock the door after he leaves. The bruises on her body and her own words reveal that she's being subjected to constant abuse. She get's herself out of this pickle how? She signs up for mail order locksmithing courses? She grows wings? Seriously, I don't see what the puzzle is here. Also, anyone else having a hyperactive auto-correct problem? It's driving mad.

This.

Theon is the only one she can turn to. It's a desperation move that didn't work.

Ned didn't go looking for him. LF sent Ned to the "last place Jon Arron visited before he died." The blacksmith. LF sending some random dudes into the world looking for children that kinda look like Robert? During a war? And they didn't stumble upon Yoren's caravan heading up the kings road to the wall?

Maybe that's not her most important plotline? Why is it that the strongest critics of Sansa's current situation assume she's now a non-character? He doesn't have him.

Yeah, and he was lying to Sansa there. Joffrey's murder makes Lady Ollenna his co conspirator. It also gives him a mechanism to get Sansa out, though that's thread is going to take an unexpected turn.

It's not just the torment, but the constant threat of torture. In the books, Reek is sometimes tortured for no reason, or Ramsey will engineer a situation where Reek can't win. e.g., Theon's admission to Lady Dustin (I think) that he begged Ramsey to remove his digits (which is literally true but hardly complete) or starving him half to death then threatening him with flaying or amputation for eating a rat in the pen he is kept without permission to "eat one of the dreadfort's rats". Also, engineering his escape so he could be hunted and brought back. Ramsey's version of being nice to Reek is "only" keeping him in a state of constant fear.

When he says "the same thing I offered Cersei, A boy" I assumed he's talking about Sweet Robin, referring to the Vale. He's engineering a war. Stoking tension and making alliances with a bunch of sides. He's doing it all in secret and in such a way that he various factions betray each other. Risky.

There is no Theon. Only Reek.

Davos' interactions with Stannis in that episode deal exactly with that.