has it been demonstrated in the books in some way that betrays our understanding of how carrier pigeons work? they are trained to fly to specific locations (the castles) or perhaps between two locations, their training and distribution coordinated by the maesters. sansa could send a message with a raven trained to…

'i feel sorry for you' isn't cliche at all.

i'm betting he's been waiting all season to use it

why does everybody think sansa knew they were coming? are the ravens trained to bring return messages to arbitrary battle locations?

they've made it pretty clear that ramsay has spent a lifetime hunting people for sport. the whole thing with rickon, pulling jon in to where he was when the sides started charging, was designed specifically to define the zone where ramsay would massacre his own people in addition to jon's, creating the barrier.

it's called 'jumping the snark,' that point in the series where reviewers are merely comparing the show to the work of doubtless genius they've created in their heads.

kinda fitting that a review questioning the point of it all concludes with yet another paragraph on lady stoneheart. even if the season ended with stoneheart going full dark phoenix on house frey, the constant whining about it will have already sucked out any capacity for joy in her arrival.

wtf did littlefinger text her?

aww they should have gone with your ideas because that would have been so much better.

it's always fascinating to me that people will appreciate a show because its imagination challenges their expectations, but like five minutes later they start faulting it for not being as boring and predictable as they are. it's fun to speculate, but there's good reason that most people who think they know where the…

We know that Margaery hasn't really been converted, so i'm wondering if she and Tommen are playing their own game against the high sparrow, and they're keeping Cercei out of it, because Cercei kinda screws everything up. (the display by the mountain being one example; she can't resist an opportunity to gloat or show…

'i'm too olde for this shit' - jesus

two things i thought really lovely about this episode:

the flashes show aerys and they also show what looks like wildfire being burned in the caverns beneath king's landing, and also bran's fall. however, the fire under king's landing was supposedly prevented from happening by jamie killing aerys. having just seen how his influence affected events with hodor, is bran…

and i get that—and to be fair, the original article here had a lot of positive things to say as well—i was more disappointed that what i found to be some of the more giddily fun plot twists were characterized as oversights and inconsistencies. rhys and ben posing as a gay couple i thought was a cool way to highlight…

'No, I'm just not willing to do the excessive mental and emotional work you seem to imply I should put into it to somehow make it all fit in a way that I can interpret to the show's benefit.'

what's so fun about the show is that the cons are so multi-layered. in its plots, it demonstrates to us over and over that when you (the viewer) think you've discovered a flaw in the character or their action, the next part of the con shows you that the apparent flaw was part of the con. a great con makes you think…

but isn't that part of the point? the show is blogger-proof, because it's not possible to simultaneously hate- and/or blog-watch it and appreciate its lightness and humor. reflected in its theme, the show seems intentionally designed to reward the viewer genuinely seeking to be entertained (or conned), but overly…

the reason alice got away with the gun in the purse is that she gave him the option of which purse—predicting, correctly, that were he to suspect a trick, he would have figured it was in the purse that she selected that he remarked was inappropriate to her outfit. consider the scenes leading up to that, where she is…

at that point in their scheme, it was past mattering whether anyone saw them together, particularly given that the next step was to confront morgan's mother and expose the theft taking place.