2941

Hehe. It has to be said that Bronn is one of the top characters in the tv series.

If nothing else, this series has been a boon for craggy, slightly older character actors. They’ve all had a chance to really shine, and they’ve given the series some real gravitas.

2942

I’d totally watch One and a Half man. I’m grinning like a loon just from watching that trailer.

2943

Wlder Frey acts for a reason though. He risked everything for this boy King and kept his word. The most important thing the Freys risked their entire family for was dishonoured by Robb Stark.

Worse, he had screwed up. Renly’s murder drove the Tyrells into the Lannister camp - and Edmure’s foolishness had allowed the Lannisters to defeat Stannis.

Edmure’s victory was Stark’s fault. He should have made his plan clear to his most important ally – and he did not.

After all that, defeat was inevitable. The best way for Frey to avoid the destruction of his House at that point was to betray the Starks. And why not? Robb Stark had betrayed him, after all. Walder Frey kept his word; Stark broke his. For Frey to continue to fight was likely to result in the destruction of his House to honour a commitment his liege lorde had solemnly sworn – and cavalierly broken. Frey’s way out was to betray the Starks – who had betrayed him.

So that’s what he did. Yes, yes, broke the guest-right custom, but apart from that, everything else Walder Frey did was reasonable and rational.

Robb got what he deserved, in many respects. Walder Frey was entitled to take his revenge. Evil? Maybe. But not for that reason alone.

2944

All the Starks got what they deserved (except Cat getting zombified. She deserved to stay dead).

2945

Naahhhhhh.

By the norms of the book universe what the Freys did was clearly beyond the pale; even their allies are disgusted. By a sort of universe-agnostic, abstracted, machiavellian power logic Walder had rational, family preserving motive (as well as some quasi-legal justification) for cutting ties with the Starks and joining their enemies.

But it can’t be plausibly argued that the only way to do that, and to make amends with Tywin was this whole elaborate heinous episode of mass murder. We can’t know what mix of malice and avarice went into Walder’s decision making but I don’t buy a “necessity” argument.

(FWIW I’m firmly in the Robb’s A Moron camp.)

2946

Funny but the voice over just doesn’t sound right to me…

2947

I haven’t read any of the books (I’m waiting for them to arrive Monday on the mail so I’ll fix that soon enough) but I know of the infamous time between new books so I found this hilarious:

YgARP.jpg788×854

2948

I laughed at that cartoon - it beat crying.

2949

Bran deserved to be thrown out a window? Really, it’s one thing to say they are contributed to their own fates, it’s another to say they deserved what they got. I’d agree with the former in many cases, the latter is a bit more than grim and borders on psychopathic.

2950

Bran is a borderline case as he shouldn’t have been climbing towers like an idiot, but I’ll give him a pass since he was a kid. Cat, Ned, Robb, and Sansa all acted stupidly when they should have known better.

2951

And the appropriate punishments for acting stupid is beheading (after confessing trying to save his daughter), being carted off by a likely pedophile after being beaten and abused on a regular basis, and sadistically staged executions?

I agree, the Starks share responsibility in their fates. But there’s a pretty big difference between responsibility and deserving of those particular outcomes.

2952

Yeah, I think that they didn’t deserve it, nobody deserves that unless they are being evil. Their honor-bound stupidity had the asking for it.

2953

Sansa did act stupidly, but know better? Nah. She is just a silly, romantic teenybopper whose actions had terrible consequences. I give her a pass simply because of this. I don’t expect someone of her age group to act with foresight and intelligence. Sure you can argue that Dany and Arya acted better, but they are not representative of how a lovestruck teenybopper actually would act. Someone said, and maybe it was even here at Qt3, that she wants to be in a Disney movie. Instead, she got Game of Thrones.

2954

In the context of that world? Yes. I don’t know if you ever watched The Wire, but there’s a great line where one of the badasses says, “you want it to be this way, but it’s the other way.” That perfectly sums up the Starks for me.

The entire time Ned and Cat and Robb and Sansa were doing pretty much anything, all I could think was, “Nooooooooo!!! Stop it! You’re fucking everything up and you know better!” Ned wanted a world where his integrity and honor counted for something. Cat wanted a world where her grizzly mom routine would prevail. Robb wanted a world where you could have your cake and eat it, too. Sansa wanted a fairy tale. It was the other way.

All of them (with the possible exception of Sansa) knew how deluded they were. Their actions ranged beyond the borders of stupid and ended up deep in willfully reckless territory. If you act like that (again, within the context of the setting – we’re not talking about the real modern world here) then yeah, you deserve what you already know you were going to get. They all would have been better off dying clean, honorable deaths than what they ended up doing, which was repeatedly dragging the Stark name through the mud (unwillingly, in Ned’s case, but unwittingly in nobody’s case).

Arya seems to be doing as fine as she could be doing under the circumstances, and it’s because she’s the only one who kept her wits and acted rationally. (Bran and Rikkon are young enough that they’re just kind of along for the ride, but at least they’re listening to (seemingly) good counsel.)

2955

He didn’t cut ties with the Starks and join their enemies.

He (and Bolton) completely handled the King in the North for all time, and joined their enemies, delivering the entirety of the North back into the ‘peace’ of the realm.

For that, his brood of children should have been married into houses of power throughout the realm. I think his rewards to date were far beneath the service he performed.

It is unclear - did House Frey assume overlordship of the lords previously under House Tully after the Red Wedding?

2956

I’m on the fence regarding this. Yes, she’s young, but I felt she willingly turned her back on her Stark heritage in pursuit of her fairy tale, and that she knew that doing so was wrong. It’s something a rash, lovestruck teenager would do, certainly, but it seemed to be a conscious decision that she was uncomfortable making.

2957

Yeah, I appreciate all of that, but the point is one can’t construct any sort of necessity defence.

2958

Again, that has nothing to do with whether they deserved their particular outcomes. The implication is that those exacting those punishments were justified or their behavior warranted. Even in the context of that world, it’s hard to argue it’s just for Joffery to have Sansa beaten because you think her betrayal of her family is stupid. Why would Joffery punish her for ratting out her father?

Deserved does not merely describe what is or what occurs. It can, but only when they happen to meet. It describes more than cause and consequence, it describes what’s appropriately meted out.

You think I’m arguing something I’m not. The only way I can make sense of your argument here and still keep it under the umbrella of “deserved” is if you believe in some kind of karmic sense of justice. Even in assuming that, and in the context of the world, that’s a pretty fucked up balance of the scales you have there from my viewpoint.

2959

Sansa sided with the wrong people, and she knew it, but like her parents and her older brother she felt consequences somehow didn’t apply to her.

We’re quibbling over semantics, so here’s how I apply “deserved.” I pose the question, “did they ask for it?” If the answer is yes, they got what they deserved.

Ned, Cat, Robb, and Sansa were begging for the outcomes they got in the context of how the world of Westeros works. If you want to keep painting me as a fucked up sociopath because of how I feel about some characters in a fantasy book, go right ahead, but it’s a bit hyperbolic (as was my original statement that all the Starks got what they deserved).

2960

Let’s try this again and perhaps I can be more clear (moved from the edit of my original post).

I didn’t want to get into the Wire because I haven’t seen it, but perhaps this will make my point clearer. You are misunderstanding the quote from the Wire. To paraphrase, he’s saying deserved has nothing to do with it. We can profess justice, but justice isn’t reality, which is pretty much the opposite of what you said by saying you thought they got what they deserved. Unless you are defining deserved circularly as a means of undermining the notion of justice or morality, saying they “deserved” it is beyond harsh, it’s inaccurate. If you are defining deserved circularly as broader point, then that wasn’t clear to me from your original post.

Let’s take the guy that tried to poison Dany for example. He got dragged from a horse until he died. It’s grim, gruesome, cruel and unusual by modern standards, but within the context of Dothraki society, his crimes met their deserved punishment. He may not even have known what to expect if he got caught, except death and a rather painful one. Contrast that with Sansa, Rob, Cat, or Ned. Any of them might have expected death or even in Sansa case eventually cruelty, but the actual particulars of the negative consequences were extreme even by the standards their society espouses.

Last I checked, Sansa didn’t ask Joffery to have her beaten. It’s not just semantics* and how we judge characters in a story (even if fantasy), is reflective of our own personal outlooks. Yes, that’s the case. It being a fantasy book doesn’t change that. That you think that what happened to them, somehow is a fitting punishment for their pride, is pretty astonishing.

*And I tried to agree with you, btw, by couching it in terms of responsibility and what happened to them was in part a consequence of their actions. When you continue to assert deserved has a proper meaning in your original post, that’s when it’s reasonable to assume that on some level you actually find their punishments fitting given the context, which like I said is pretty astonishing.

Edit: And there I went again… I don’t know why I drag myself into these kind of arguments. I’ll drop it and go back to my hole.