Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[IainC]

I will apparently be riding Euron Greyjoy to victory.  

You didn't even get enough points to pass me in this episode, son!

And Iain got most of his points from "memorable deaths" so I think his stay at the top will be short lived.

Yeah I get to replace chunks of my teams with free agents. Go Hot Pie! i took him for the big league because I'm pretty fucked in that one anyway and Yohn Royce in the other league (that I'm currently winning).

[Hoax]

re: is jon making good calls.

Its not that he should ignore the summons, its that he doesn't need to go personally. He could send a few black brothers who have seen the army of the dead with Sansa or with ol fingerpouch onion knight (forgot his name). Alternatively he could try to get word to Sam to go handle it, what with it being omega urgent and Sam being so close to Dragonstone.

Why shouldn't he go himself? Because shit is still very fragile in the north and him being there keeps everyone on track and things from falling apart. Leaving Littlefinger creeping around Winterfell after doing the dumbest shit you could possibly do to Littlefinger is a fucking bad plan. Full stop.

If he had someone manipulated Lfinger into being forced to go with him to Dragonstone and he was taking a few top northern lords' sons (whoever still has sons left alive) with him or doing some other kind of moves that seem like he's operating on anything other than Jon Snow does the right shit time I'd buy all this sudden faith in him not being a total numbnuts. But no he's a total numbnuts, the only smart anything he showed in that episode is "Tyrion isn't a total cunt" which is something he does know.

[eldaec]

Hi,

Jon can't be arsed coming down but I'm some random no name who hasn't met any of you before or seen the army of the dead. I'm going to convince you to abandon your goals and lend us your dragons. Oh, I also want you to turn the seat of your house into a mine because a friend of a friend told me it would help us fight some zombies that you are unaware of.

Where is Jon? Oh he's sitting in his castle doing politics less well than his sister and waiting for dragons and zombies.

Yes, I know about the very obvious war raging 50 miles outside your door.

Yes, I am also aware that if what I say is true then the North has a zero percent survival chance if you do not agree - yet I attempting this without any realistic autonomy to negotiate military command structures or post-conflict constitutional arrangements, which are clearly your overriding goals.

[satael]

It's going to take Jon months to do the trip so it's a pretty big deal to leave the north to Littlefinger's scheming.

[rattran]

The whole map only takes 1 episode interstitial to cross! Jon will be there half-way through next episode, right before word of Iron Fleet 1.0's destruction gets there.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, despite the arrival of winter, Westeros in the show is about as difficult to cross as a large shopping mall would be. Except for the Walkers, who seem to be getting lost or are waiting for the plot appropriate point for the Wall to fall.

[Bunk]

Yeah, if I followed the discussion in the last episode correctly:

- Army of the Dead was at one end of the was at one of the Castles at the wall at the same time Jon was there.
- Jon left that battle, returned to Castle Black, then went to Winterfell, and is now sending Wildling Man back to the Wall to defend the next castle over?

Most maps drawn show the distance from Castle Black to Winterfell to be at least twice the length of the Wall.

I won't even get in to how long it must have taken both Iron Fleets to sail around the entire continent.

[Abagadro]

- Army of the Dead was at one end of the was at one of the Castles at the wall at the same time Jon was there.\

No, the army of the dead was at Hardhome which is a wildling settlement a ways north of the wall. He was extrapolating that they would hit the closest Nightswatch castle to that which is why he sent Tormund there.

Your point still stands though. Hardhome to the wall is 1/3 of the distance from Castle Black to Winterfell. Those zombies walk slow I guess.

Also, traveling at the speed of plot and all.

[Samwise]

Remember in the first season how it took someone like two episodes to get from Winterfell to King's Landing?

[HaemishM]

Ain't nobody got time for that.

[Merusk]

Remember in the first season how it took someone like two episodes to get from Winterfell to King's Landing?

Baratheon's wagon train took 3 months to make the trip. Now, that's an informal court with hundreds of not thousands of soldiers, retainers, horses, servants, tents, etc that travels maybe 4-5 hours a day.

Everything I've researched says that Winterfell to King's Landing is approx. 1k miles (500 leagues)  Well-trained and ridden-hard horses can travel 40-50 miles in a day. So the MINIMUM that trip should ever take is 20 days.

So. Yeah. Teleportation.

[eldaec]

And for comparison, castle black is 600 miles north of winterfell. Given that the wall is 300 miles across, eastwatch is roughly 750-800 miles. Hardhome is a few hundred more, and Night King has been walking for 13 episodes.

In those 13 episodes Sam has travelled the length of Westeros - roughly 3000 miles. But Tyrion has covered 5000 returning from Mereen. Dany's Vaes Dothrak diversion and the trip home is maybe 8000? Jorah Mormont has probably clocked up about 12000 (mereen - volantis - mereen - vaes dothrak - oldtown)

But I think the winner is Theon Greyjoy. Since escaping at around the time of hardhome, he's travelled to the iron islands (1500 miles) then by sea to Meereen (6000 miles) back to Dragonstone (another 5000) then south as far as the battle with Euron. That's 14000 miles in the time its taken the Night King to not reach Eastwatch.

[eldaec]

Of course, Gendry probably has them all beat in that damn rowing boat.

[eldaec]

Alternatively he could try to get word to Sam to go handle it, what with it being omega urgent and Sam being so close to Dragonstone.

While we're discussing distance, Sam is roughly 2000 miles from Dragonstone. In fact, while his father and brother are in Kings Landing, he is over 1500 miles from any named character except Jorah and Gilly.

So about half a day's ride.

[Sir T]

Their secret?

[Samwise]

But winter is coming.  Where'd they get the coconuts?

[rattran]

Dorne, duh.

[Rendakor]

Carried by an Essosi or Westerosi swallow?

[eldaec]

More distance facts...


The internet tells me 16th century ships could consistently cover 50 miles per day, but crazy fast ships with good wind could reach 100 miles.

So our lower bound for time since hardhome is 140 days, based on Theon's remarkable achievements.

Eastwatch is 120 miles from Hardhome according to the internet, so the Night King is making progress at a rate of less than one mile per day.

Winter is coming, but it would appear that Kings Landing and Dragonstone are safe for at least another 3 years.

Logically, Dany's best course would be to ignore Jon, conquer the 6 kingdoms south of the Neck and give everyone a couple of years to chill out while the peasants mine dragonglass. She can summon the whole gang to a reunion gig at a natural choke point somewhere somewhere around Moat Callin and finish off the white walkers to celebrate her first 1000 days.

[Khaldun]

It honestly would be awesome if that's what Tyrion said and everyone overrode him. Dude has lived through at least two winters, it should be old hat for people in Westeros.

[Chimpy]

So are they going to re-score last week's episode? 

[Khaldun]

Fucking a, finally someone mentioned that stockpiling food for three or four years of winter might be a meaningful strategic concern that civil war kind of interfered with.

They are determined to fully Worf poor Tyrion, though. Now Dany is gonna just send the dragons to burn Lannister armies and get at least one of them killed. Cersei has acquired fearsome new plot armor because they've decided she is the ultimate bad guy.

Euron's lightspeed equipped ships are pretty amazing too though.

[HaemishM]

Euron is the one with plot armor. I could tell the minute I read his character in the books that he was going to have an impact entirely overshadowing what he should because he's exactly the kind of Mary Sue villain character that writer's fall in love with.

[Khaldun]

It is a problem with falling action in general, but especially when you're obligated to pretend that anything at all could happen, which is what Martin set in motion.

Let's just suppose that they've actually decided that no, no one gets the girl or boy, there are no happy endings, the Iron Throne will be irrelevant, everyone or almost in Westeros will die. That's cool--I'm totally down with that. But then you really really want at this point in the story--as it nears its end--for that to be thematically evident everywhere. For people to be starving, for zombies to be storming defenseless castles in the north, for fancy lords and ladies to be wearing jeans and t-shirts because there's no fancy shit left, etc.--you want everything to be grinding down because it's too late and everyone's missed the chance to turn it around. That is not a message you want to cram into the last two episodes next year.

[schild]

i'm just gonna say it

this season kinda sucks

[Rasix]

i'm just gonna say it

this season kinda sucks

It's like Lannister wish fulfillment. At the end of the season we're going to find out Rosanne didn't actually win the lottery and Dan died of his heart attack.

Like do Danny's allies just not like scouts or something? I mean, it must be hard to keep up with the teleporting armies and ships, but hell.  

[Bunk]

Ok... let's see here: Casterly Rock is on the West Coast and Dragonstone is on the East. So they sent Greyworm's army and Yara's ship off at the same time. Both would have had to go south. Euron sails out from somewhere and hits just Yara's ship, which for some reason wasn't sailing with all the other ships that had left at the same time in the same direction.

So Euron sails back to King's Landing, parades the prisoners around, gets back on his boat, and sails his whole fleet back around to the other side of the continent to arrive a few hours after Greyworm. I'd like to believe that Martin would have at least tried to make all the sea travel be physically possible in the books.

Just to add, I just looked at the map again. Dragonstone sits dead center in the narrowest part of the exit to Blackwater Bay. Any fleet sailing out of King's Landing had to sail right past it. In this case, twice...

[Shannow]

I doubt he put the fleet at Kings Landing.  It's not off the charts as a season goes but I enjoyed a healthy does of Tyrion being Tyrion this episode (his observations about Snow brooding were hilarious), we got Danymeeting Snow for the first time! Cersei being Cersei, and Ollena using the c word. 'twas a good time.

[Merusk]

Much as I hate the damn Euron teleportation ships the "Olenna gets her last stab at the Lannisters" was great.  As was the Melisandre/ Varys conversation, and the timing of Rhegar buzzing Jon while they were talking about his father.

The whole conversation with Jon and Dany went about as well as could be expected and predicted. I enjoyed the scene but it really was just more window dressing rather than plot advancement.

At this point if we don't find out Euron has some sort of actual sea magic I'm going to get pissed.

[satael]

Arya must be taking the scenic route since everyone else managed to travel huge distances in the meantime.

[Shannow]

Almost forgot, Euron Greyjoy with the best line of the damn night.  Nikolaj really had to master his pained expressions in that episode.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Almost forgot, Euron Greyjoy with the best line of the damn night.  Nikolaj really had to master his pained expressions in that episode.

"This is Jon Snow....he's king in the north"

That was my favorite line.

[Brolan]

It's exactly what I expected.  GRRM couldn't get off his fat lazy ass to create new source material the past few years so the show dragged out what they had.  Now at the end the show has to crazily careen around hitting all the the plot points they can.  Expect this to be the norm.

[HaemishM]

I have zero problems with all the magically teleporting ships and armies. I just put it down to "It's television, you have to move the plot somehow." Otherwise we're going to get a lot of scenes of people fucking for no reason, eating lots of various shit while talking about fuckall, and entire seasons worth of braid-tugging. Martin took a long time to tell his story and with only 13 episodes left, there's got to be some speed up just to get the damn thing done. I'm not going to hammer a show with dragons, ice zombies and people coming back from the dead too hard on its ability to move pieces around on a chess board at speeds that would be impossible.

[Shannow]

Agreed. It's never taken me out of the show once where I've sat there thinking 'oh wait how the fuck did they get there so fast?'.