I think that The Red Wedding is a very, very good reason to be and stay Unsullied. That shit fucked me up so bad I had to put the book down for three days. So bad I’m not sure I’m going to watch the next episode.
Since the Unsullied know Important People will die, I don’t think the impact will be as great as it was when I read it. Some have already speculated that Robb will die. I’m thinking the buzz will dampen the shock.
Still— I’m not sure I can watch it. At we won’t have to live it through Caitlyn.
No way! It’s scary over there! I wouldn’t be surprised if a goon had the same username. (It’s a My Little Pony reference).
I’m not laughing AT the Unsullied with RW coming, but more like kind of laughing at myself… it’s so awful I can laugh or cry, so I’m going to laugh. I cried a lot already. I probably will again. But I love watching reactions of people getting caught off guard, so the next two weeks will be like Christmas.
I think I said it before in one of these threads that although I knew something was going to happen, I wasn’t expecting THAT and it was written so amazingly that it was a visceral reaction by so many people, including me. So people can be like “OMG the Freys are going to get Robb, I predict!” but they’re still going to be gut-punched seeing it.
^ ^ ^ Oh, ok, that makes sense. The poster on SA I was thinking of got their name from MLP, too, and has a MLP avatar. ^ ^ ^
Yeah, I agree. Every season so far has ended on a,
“Holy living fuck, what the Hell?!” scene.
Season 1 was Dany surviving the fire with dragons.,
Season 2 was the White Walkers appearing.
And season 3 will be Lady Stoneheart condemning a Frey to death.
It does sort of mess up the end of Season 4, since that’s the second half of book 3, so they’ll have to come up with some other “big impact” scene from book 3 or the start of book 4 to end on.
It’s possible season 3 might just end with Lady Stoneheart getting revived, and then season 4 ends with her killing the Frey, but by that point the impact of her is lost, so it makes more sense from a story-telling and “holy shit!” perspective to do it like the epilogue to Storm of Swords and have her appear out of fucking nowhere as a zombie-type thing.
Like…I see it in my head. Dany takes Yunkai, and frees the slaves, and they all start to chant “Mysa! Mysa!” and we think that’s the end of the season, and them BAM, cut to some random hill in the middle of nowhere, maybe a bit of snow, with a few people standing around a tree. One lone man has a noose around his neck, and is seated on a horse below a tree. Thoros of Myr says something like,
"[whatever your name is] Frey…you stand accused of violating Guest Rights, treason, and murder…how do you plead?
The Frey will say something like,
“No no listen to me! I had nothing to do with it! It was all my grandfather’s doing, you have to believe me! I’m innocent!”
Then Thoros goes,
“The Frey pleads not-guilty…Lady Stoneheart, what is your verdict?”
And then cut to insane, Zombie-Cat, who holds her withered hand to her slashed throat and in a croaking voice says,
“Guilty.”
It’s the exact opposite of schadenfreude with me. The RW is one of the best scenes from the books in large part because it provokes such a strong emotional reaction. Provoking an emotional response is one of the main goals of much of art. The RW is supposed to be sad, and it made me sad when I read it. But in the long run I’m much happier because I got to experience an excellent piece of art, even if part of what made that art excellent was that it made me sad.
So I’m excited for newbies to experience the RW because in the long run I think it will make them enjoy the series more as a whole.
I’d totally do it, but doing an “in your face” post after only two deaths is kind of weak and so it might hint at there being more on his list that aren’t long for Westeros.
When I read the RW I actually put the book down and out loud said WTF? I had to explain to the person next to me who hadn’t read the books, but who I was hoping would so I didn’t want to spoil things. I said, I’m just shocked that every time I start really getting into this story or character that the author has spent a lot of time building up and developing, bam, they get killed."
I had to read the section twice to make sure I read it correctly. Then I read it again because it was so enjoyable.
I remember getting to the end of that chapter and thinking, there has to be some kind of loophole that allows for Robb and Cat to actually not be dead. It has to be a fake out. Right?
I’m really, really interested in what’s going to happen to Talissa at the Red Wedding.
PS - is anyone else super paranoid about getting this thread and the spoiler free thread mixed up? I keep rechecking the thread title again and again before I hit post.
In the book, Jeyne didn’t attend the wedding – it would have been added insult to the Freys – so Talisa probably won’t be there.
Yep.
It was such a fake-out. In the book, GRRM has Robb making intricate battle plans – to take Casterley Rock, if I remember right – what seemed like pages and pages of strategy. In the previews, we see Robb and Catelyn apparently making the same plans. And then whammo.
As I think I already wrote, the impact won’t be as strong for the “unspoiled”. Robb and Cat characters haven’t been developed as much in the show, and they appear more moronic too. Finally, Cat’s grief over her children death was barely shown (in fact it’s unclear whether she believes them to be dead or not in the show), which will make the viewers less sympathetic. And finally, the scene can’t be shown from Cat’s point of view, as it is in the book.
I don’t think I put the book down until Arya got hit by the axe. That’s when I said, “really? really?!!? WTF?” No one around to see my lament though.
The only time I put down the book in shock with someone there to see it was the lovely Theon/Jeyne cunnilingus scene in ADWD. [repost of my comment from another community follows] I read this scene and put the book down for bit, saying, “that is so messed up.” My wife (a spoiler-hound) asked what was messed up. After warning her a few times that I was serious and confirming that she wanted to know, I told her. She said, “See, something is wrong with GRRM. Something really bad must have happened to him. I’m sorry, you can’t make shit like that up and be normal.”
I’m not sure I agree with her conclusion, but it did make me laugh. (She repeated her claim when I told her about the Freys sewing Grey Wind’s head onto Robb’s body)
