Well remember that there's speculation that Rhaegar secretly married Lyanna. I think it's possible simply for how it ups the ante (especially with Jon out of the Night's Watch and thus able to inherit again).

He'll settle down after you get the first or second tree branch through him.

Right? That's really not a hard prosthetic to build. Or at the very least roots wrapped around him. As it is he looks kind of like he's sitting in a wicker basket.

That's fair. Although surely they'd be travelling fully armed nevertheless? But yeah, times of war, in a hurry, behind enemy lines or still lots of hostiles around etc. etc., plus who knows what they'd been through immediately before arriving.

In my mind, the best fight choreography for this kind of thing (the stupendously badass set) does implicitly what the first Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes film did overtly: I like it when the cinematography expresses concision, calculation, and economy of motion. I referred to the recent The 100 episode for that reason,…

Exactly. Though I have to add that it kinda bugged me that Ned's crew wasn't fully armed and armoured, it's not really clear to me why that would be. Other than staging/facial recognition (though of a younger version of Sean Bean who we're presumably not going to be spending much time with?)

Does nihilism require pessimism? (Asking for real, I don't actually know.) To me the joy of Vonnegut is that he recognizes the meaninglessness and the frequent horror of existence but finds reasons to keep going anyway.

But note that Musashi dueled with a long and a short sword. I'm not even saying that two long blades is impossible though, I'm sure someone has figured out a way to make it work. Just that it looked silly and ineffective to me in this episode.

It was actually just this weekend at Civil War when Hawkeye said, in character, that he had no idea why he was even there that I realized that we'd have Jeremy Renner in everything forever now.

That's… actually just lighter fluid. Still, enjoy!

I detect nihilist themes in his work. I haven't read everything he's written but a message I get from what I have read is that probably nothing means anything (but may not be a reason not to keep going). That's really the jist of the one quote I got right, right? The world is confusing and sometimes things just…

I don't agree, actually. But I think you need to go the opposite route to what they did here, and give Dayne speed, power and mobility, rather than magical perfect defense. So there's a standoff with the four of them in a semi-circle in front of him and suddenly he's disarmed and gutted the dude at one end and is…

That's my sense too. Two weapons that length seem like they'd get in the way of each other, and swinging a sword that long should really be a whole body motion, so I feel like there'd be both serious balance and momentum issues - you really wouldn't be able to strike with either weapon equally well most of the time as…

I've heard that about the Potter sets too. But yeah, definitely not saying environment's the only factor, things like talent and hard work and good writing are obviously as important for young actors as anyone else. (I will decline to guess at what made Wesley so terrible, since I think Wil's a good guy.)

Right?

I don't know, obviously, but I suspect there might be huge differences on set, too. I imagine there are sets where the children are given their instructions for in front of the camera and otherwise treated like furniture, if not obstacles. And conversely sets where they're treated like co-workers, allowed to have…

Whoops. Right. Yes. I got so excited I lost track of my nihilists.

I thought it looked ridiculous, actually. In a cool way, but not really like an effective way to do things. I don't really know anything about swordfighting, but it looked like he was just waving them around. No sense of power or momentum behind the swings.

Can we talk about the Vonnegut almost-quotes in that first scene with Jon and Davos? Both "You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do." and "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." in the space of a few minutes.

This is what I mean, exactly. There are a lot of great characters out there, and there's no reason the MCU couldn't have been planned around making more of them core. Even if we allow that the core Avengers were too big to substitute out, did the team really need to be rounded out with B-listers like Hawkeye and…