Author: stevenattewell

do you think we’ll ever get a Spider-Man or X-Men movie with Dracula as the villain

No. 

First, Marvel’s Dracula would probably run into legal problems with Universal’s Dracula. 

Second, I think there would be intense worry that Dracula would pose too great a problem of tonal or thematic clashing with Spider-Man or the X-Men.

Third, they’ve got much better villains in their back catalogues who are more natural fits. 

Are deserter’s from the Night’s Watch only marked for death as long as they remain in Westeros? Dareon seems pretty brazen about it in Braavos, as if he’s beyond the law (and is unlucky enough for Arya to know about him). And yet “flee to the Free Cities” does not seem top on the priority list of other deserters.

Fleeing to the Free Cities is not easy:

  1. You need to either get past customs controls at Eastwatch or somehow get through the whole of the North to get to a port where you won’t be recognized as a deserter. 
  2. Passage takes money and unless they’re highborn, deserters are unlikely to have enough money on them. So it’s either stowing away or somehow getting your hands on enough cash, both of which have huge risks.
  3. The vast majority of deserters aren’t going to speak the languages of the Free Cities, so life on the other side is going to be very difficult indeed – as Sam and company found, everything in Essos has a price – and without language skills and most likely without much in the way of an education and quite possibly without skills relevant to an urban economy, you’re going to struggle. Best-case scenario is low-wage unskilled labor. 
  4. Worst-case scenario, as a penniless foreigner, you get abducted and sold into slavery. 

So how were the Others getting past the wall if the horn didn’t exist? They have an undead army but are blocked by a giant magical wall what their plan of attack. And were the Others also searching for the horn for themselves?Also if Mance had gotten hold of the horn would he have really blown it to bring the wall down, because that would’ve been dumb since he would’ve endangered everybody including the wildlings he was trying to get to safety.

It’s hard to say, because we don’t know what the parameters for the Wall’s magical defenses are, and we do know from Melisandre and Storm’s End that there are way to bypass them. 

  • It could be that the Horn was their trump card.
  • It could also be the case that the wight attack in AGOT and/or the attack on the Fist in ASOS was an attempt to “dead-drop” assets behind the Wall in order to de-activate them or somehow take advantage of the one-way block on magic. 
  • It could be the case that the Wall’s defenses require a Night’s Watch to be present for them to work – and killing off the leadership or reducing the overall numbers of the Watch or getting the wildlings to do that for them would cause the magical defenses to drop. 

Suppose Robb had listened to his mother and kept Theon close by, but Balon writes his son off as collateral and attacks the North anyway. Do you think Robb could’ve brought himself to execute his foster brother, and if not, what other options does he have?

poorquentyn:

smilingalwayssmiling:

Except Robb’s refusal to outright murder the boy prisoners (Frey and Lannister squires, young teens) as a form of vengeance is why he has issues with the Karstarks, so I would think that’s much more up in the air. He kills Karstark for murdering the boys because they’re unarmed prisoners. I think he’d probably have similar issues, especially with someone he’s grown up closely with and who he could also see as someone who’s been a child prisoner for ten years. Robb takes after Ned, but that’s not to say he never makes his own calls on what’s “right”.

“The Kingslayer cut them down. These two were of his ilk. Only blood can pay for blood.”

“The blood of children?” Robb pointed at the corpses.

Sure, Theon’s not a child by the time these events roll around, but they’re similar circumstances. Robb’s not into the blood of the son pays for blood of the father bit.

The difference is that the squires Rickard killed were prisoners of war, not hostages taken for good behavior. Rickard killed them for pure vengeance, outside the acceptable confines, whereas Theon is only among the Stark’s *to* be killed if Balon rises again.

Robb ultimately decides to execute Rickard because politically, he has to, even though he recognizes Edmure’s arguments against doing so. Same deal here; if he doesn’t execute Theon, he’s broadcasting that it doesn’t mean anything when House Stark takes hostages, and that you can attack them without consequence, a bad message to send to both vassals and enemies. We can certainly argue that this logic isn’t a good thing overall, and Robb would of course face a great deal of pain as a result of following it, but it’s the logic he has to follow.

poorquentyn:

He wouldn’t have much of a choice. His vassals are watching.

Except Robb’s refusal to outright murder the boy prisoners (Frey and Lannister squires, young teens) as a form of vengeance is why he has issues with the Karstarks, so I would think that’s much more up in the air.

That’s not really why Robb has trouble with the prisoners, tho. It’s not like Rickard Karstark has made public appeals to have them executed and then gets rebuffed; rather, Karstark has been irreconcilably wrathful since the beginning of ACOK. 

In other words, it’s not a widely-shared attitude: the Northern lords mostly like Robb’s peace terms, although there’s a few who lean in Karstark’s direction. And there’s a few who are pissed off about Catelyn freeing Jaime, although none of them are as vehement as Karstark, but most aren’t.

But none of them side with the killing of the hostages, because it’s a huge breach of the norms of warfare – you don’t kill noble hostages, because they’re hugely valuable for ransoms and prisoner exchanges, and it risks reprisal killings of your own kinsmen. 

In a recently-linked analysis of Euron you suggest that he will blow the Horn of Joramun and bring down the Wall. I imagine you mean this to be the Dragon Horn he claims to have pulled out of Valyria and given to Victarion. How do you square this with your idea that Benjen recovered the Horn, buried it at the Fist, and now Sam has it?

That’s not what I was suggesting – since Sam is now in Oldtown and Euron is heading to Oldtown…

Given his own nature, why is Tywin so upset at Joffrey’s impulsive sadism?

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

Because it reminds him of Aerys, and look what happened to Aerys. 

I would also like to submit that Tywin is not at all impulsive, and whether or not he’s a sadist is debatable.

Tywin tended to give his actions due consideration and think them through. This didn’t mean he didn’t make bad decisions but they weren’t hasty ones at all. And I have a hard time seeing Tywin decide to hurt people just because he gets off on hurting people; Tywin at least understands that you have to treat your leal bannermen and to an extent defeated foes with a modicum of protection, respect, mercy, and even largesse.

Put it another way: Tywin, after the Battle of the Blackwater, offered pardons to many of Stannis’ supporters and accepted them back into the King’s Peace quite happily. He does this because he doesn’t have an inherent need to hurt them, and because he understands the politics, history, and context of the situation and has considered them carefully.

Joffrey, had he been the one in charge, would probably have staged a grotesque mass execution for no better reason than that he gets off on watching people get hurt, especially if he’s the one doing the hurting. He wouldn’t have bothered to think beyond that at all.

I don’t think Tywin is immune to acts of violence carried out for emotional reasons as opposed to mere statecraft – a lot of what he did in the Rains of Castamere was personal not business, likewise despite his claims I’m pretty sure he wanted Elia dead for having gotten in between Cersei and Rhaegar, plus there’s what he did to his father’s mistress and to Tyrion and Tysha. 

But there is a difference when it comes to self-control. Tywin does nothing indiscriminately or in hot blood, he makes sure that his acts of personal satisfaction also serve his larger political interests, and when he does lash out he does so because he wants to hurt specific people for specific reasons, not because he enjoys hurting people in general.