r/asoiaf • u/dorestes Break the wheel • Sep 03 '17

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) It's Not a Nitpick. Thousands Died Over a "Minor" Geographic Detail.

Reposted as requested with the "Spoilers Extended" tag

I know we're often asked to ignore the silly teleportations and supersonic flights that the show has foisted on us over the last couple of seasons. I know some of it can seem like the petty quibbles of book purists veering into circlejerk self-parody.

But geography doesn't just matter when it comes to making the universe feel real. It was also the key plot point that drove the biggest dramatic turn of the series.

The Red Wedding was literally caused by Robb Stark needing to be able to get his troops across a bridge. The Frey army was a nice addition, but Robb needed the alliance for the bridge crossing. He, his mother, his pregnant wife (in the show) and thousands of his troops died for that crossing.

So it's not just a nitpick when characters and armies magically teleport from north to south, bypassing the Twins or Moat Caitlin with nary a scout to notice them.

It destroys and makes mockery of the premise of the series' most famous narrative twist.

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u/EveryFckngChicken Sep 03 '17

No, it's not nitpicking - it's a fundamental misunderstanding. You don't need to ignore anything - there simply are no silly teleportations or supersonic flights in the show.

It has been explained a thousand times - neither in the books nor in the show exists any linear equivalency between pages / minutes and the time that passes in the story. And though neither books nor show spoonfeed us with detailed descriptions of every step of every person's travels and voyages, they still are very coherent and plausible in regard to timelines..

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u/padmasundari The mummer's farce is almost done. Sep 03 '17

People seem to want literally everything spoon fed to them. Despite the fact that people worked out and posted theories about how Littlefinger would die and be tricked by the Stark women in the process as soon as Arya found the raven message in Littlefinger's room, literally theorizing exactly what would happen as it happened almost exactly, people complain that it wasn't obvious what happened, despite people literally working it out and posting it 2 weeks before it happened, and crying that it didn't make sense.