Wow, great discussion everyone. Altough the Sansa image made me think of LS for some reason, maybe it was because that was one of the first topics addressed though. I can't believe that Kyle was unaware just how loose the Roose was. But that's why we have "shocking lack of knowledge".

ROOSE IS AN IMMORTAL VAMPIRE WHO KILLS HIS OWN DESCENDANTS AND WEARS THEIR FACES. that is all.

I wonder if Roose's two wolf-pup-gloves symbolize Bran and Rickon.

I wonder if the whole flaying thing has to do with the Others blood in the Boltons...

I think the book was a book of stories and he had just read about the Rat King. And since he just went in with the Freys he was like 'fuck it, it's just story' and burnt the book as a way to get it out of mind. Or it was a book about how to kill vampires and he's like shit gotta get rid of this.

I thought the warg skinning thing was more to stop the Starks from warging rather than trying to jealously wear their skins for power or something. "Let's see you change your skin without any skin! Nyah!"

Also liked the Karliene song at the end. Would be cool if you had her as a guest host like you mentioned, although I wouldn't really have any questions to submit for her or anything.

So Branraven is Bunny from Unsound Variations going back in time to get shit straight?! Ok.

Interesting. I'd never attached any significance to the book, I just saw it as indicative of Roose's cold destructiveness and/or general weirdness. Maybe it was a first edition copy of How to Screw Over Your Liege Lord and Become King in the North. Can't leave that lying around.

I agree, fun as the Bolt-on/vampire/part-Other theories are, it's actually scarier to think of Roose as a human being. I do think there is more than meets the eye to his keeping Ramsay around though. His reasons for doing so seem weirdly sentimental, and he's way too cool with Ramsay casually bumping off his true-born sons.

Also, Roose/Fat Walda OTP forever.

I do like how Kyle is taking the high road when it comes to Lady Stoneheart and her potentiality for spoilers. I need these kind of reactions to help me get down from my original freakout which really prevented me from enjoying the season 4 finale.

Yeah, Kyle actually talked me down a little bit too. I now don't think Lady Stoneheart's inclusion or not is necessarily spoilerific about her level of importance. What it could mean is that whatever important thing she does do, the showrunners are going to arrive at in a different way.

Alex Graves can still shut up though.

Yeah, if Jaime takes Oakheart's place in Dorne he's gonna be dead either way.

And then the fandom exploded.

Yeah, think about it: Oakheart dies in Dorne and if they want to have Jaime die without introducing Stoneheart as another character and without taking that road, then getting him to Dorne and have him die there is just as effective as seeing him hanged by the Brotherhood without Banners and LS. in any case, it looks like Jaime's gonna bite the dust both on the show and in the books because if not, why send him to Dorne if not to die in a way that introduces the other new characters over there?

Well, that is assuming he is going to die. Personally, I do think Jaime is going to die before the end of the series, but I didn't have him pegged to die in Winds, I thought he'd last til the final book at least, but you've given me food for thought. Interesting.

A part of me is now sort of hoping he dies in season 5. It goes against all the spoilerphobic bookraging I hold dear and yet it would be very funny indeed.

Amin's theory about the origins of the Bolton flaying custom might not be that far off given that

(Skin trade spoilers)

I wanna know what Fat Walda was writing in those letters

Roose + Fat Walda OTP definitely lol

Listening to the whole discussion about Arya killing the Bolton guard really took me back to my first read. I was always bothered by Arya's actions in this chapter because she is basically escaping from Roose Bolton (her brother's bannerman), kills one of his troops (who was basically on her side) all to escape and get away from her brother's troops. Unless I'm completely misremembering, at this point Arya doesn't know that Bolton is betraying Robb.

Was anyone else just angry at her for not revealing herself? I know in hindsight it was the right thing to do, but this chapter always felt off to me because I never really got why she was trying so hard to get away.

What if Bolton didn't betray Robb and Arya makes it to Riverrun. I can just see Robb freaking out and being all, "Why the F did you kill one of my men to get to me? Why didn't you just tell Roose and send a damn raven!"

Does this make sense?

Also, what is this New York ASOIAF trivia that was mentioned? Already happened or coming up? Why don't I know about this?

The book that Roose burns could be a code book. I always assumed that Fat Waldas letters were full of code.

Also Amin agrees with me about show Catelyn so clearly I am correct and no one is allowed to argue with me about it

As for Arya - she needed to get out of there and that's it. I also think it's a good point that if this wasn't Arya there wouldn't be nearly as much hand wringing about morality going on, like if it was Jaime.

If we hadn't been inside Arya's head I don't think we'd be as forgiving of her clearly murderous actions. She'd be 'that creepy child that none of our favourite characters should come across'.

I don't think she's that creepy. GRRM's comments about her being an example of a child soldier makes so much sense to me.

I generally dislike the whole armchair psychologist thing with fictional characters. Like people saying she's a psychopath/ sociopath seems kind of reductive to me.

But then I have strong Arya feels. I love Sansa and Arya both for different reasons but I don't really like this whole thing about Sansa being more 'moral' than her. They are both in different situations with different coping mechanisms.

Yeah, I don't think I'll ever understand how people can call Arya a psychopath for this scene. She looked at the Boltons, and the Bloody Mummers, and the Freys in the stockyards, and saw exactly what fate awaited her. Her head would have been on a pike within weeks, right next to Hot Pie and Gendry. Or worse. Much worse, if Rorge had his way.

Meanwhile, Jaime Lannister slays children with all the emotional turmoil of scraping mud off his boots, and people trip over themselves to explain how misunderstood he is.

I like people being more critical about their Arya feelings. She is complicated. But I don't blame her at all for getting the hell out of town.

Barristan killed two or three gold cloaks when he needed to escape Kings Landing and I don't think anyone has questioned the moral legitimacy of that.

I think the weirdness from this scene probably comes from Arya being so young and relatively childlike, and something must therefore be wrong with a child if they committed these actions, though I'm far more inclined to say that Arya is simply a fast learner in terms of survival rather than a psychopath at this point.

Well, yeah, that is disturbing. And it's meant to be disturbing. But people act as though it proves she is inherently sociopathic, like she is somehow MORE culpable for her actions than an adult would be, when really, the opposite is true. She didn't choose for these horrible things to happen to her. She is responding to a world beyond her control, and resorting to darker and more brutal acts as the dangers mount and her psyche grows increasingly inured to death. But what is she supposed to do - accept her fate?

Maybe I'm putting words in people's mouths, but the brusque dismissal of Arya as a "sociopath" reads to me as - this character is too psychologically damaged for us to invest in or attempt to understand, and even if her hands were forced, she's a monster now, and no longer capable of emotional or moral redemption.

Agreed it bothers me too. I am troubled by some of the things Arya does but I have never stopped rooting for her.

The only reason she's able to get away with this in the eyes of the readers is because we have no insight into that Bolton guard. Were he a POV character I doubt the support for Arya's actions would be as strong. But since people don't care about the Bolton guard as a person that allows them to justify what Arya does because in abstract her life is not worth more than his.

Well, we know that he served the likes of Roose Bolton. That's pretty damning.

But my point is, killing one of the men holding her captive is nothing compared to what other characters get away with in the series - adults with far more control, authority, and options than this 10-year-old peasant girl.

To be fair, I don't think a lowly guardsman gets a great deal of choice in who he serves - if he's from Bolton lands and of fighting age, then that's his lot in life.

That said, I do agree Arya is under a lot of scrutiny for this compared to a lot of other characters (for example, Jaime casually ordering the slaughter of Ned's men back in AGoT. At least all the other bad shit he's done he had a sort of reason for, that he did just because he could).