"It's like the sharper an artist's pencil is, the freer they are to to focus on the art." Everyone is different so don't take this as me saying that you are categorically wrong, but for me I find the opposite is true, especially for the average person who will be using the ubiquitous #2 pencil, or HB depending what side of the pond you re on... or if you are one of those wanna be wallabees Middle Earth. Sharper pencils are more likely to dent the paper as you push down and drag it across the paper. It becomes impossible to fully erase at that point and you might have to start over. I was taught to use a rounded off tip so you can shade more evenly and you can sharpen it when it's time to do finishing work. But to each their own. I personally am too scared to use a fresh sharpened too early but I'm faaaaar from an expert. I just want any young viewers or people just getting onto to understand the difference and know that the expression used in the video very often doesn't apply. So try the other way too, with very blunt pencils(I would use a pocket knife to carefully shave the wood closest to the tip off to expose a few more millimeters of te lead but not enough to make it easily breakable. Good luck kids!
In the books, I always found Roose to be the most terrifying of the two. Ramsay is a wild sadist with no restraint, but Rooses' calm demeanor feels more chilling to me. I love Iwan Rheon's performance but I agree they made him too OP.
From my pov, having dropped the show mid-season 5, and going by my knowledge of the books where Roose is still very much alive, I have to agree, he is by far the more frightening Bolton. Roose Bolton is a cunning strategist who was one of the minds behind the Red Wedding. He looked Catelyn Stark dead in the eye, knowing that she wouldn't live out the night. He also had a long standing grudge against Ned for revoking his "right" of First Night, meaning that he'd get first dibs on any common woman married in his lands before her husband, whether she consented or not. In fact, (I'm not sure whether this was mentioned in the show), this was how Ramsay was conceived. A miller was married without Roose's consent, and Roose only became aware of this when he found the miller's young wife washing clothes by the river. He had his way with the woman, and had the miller hanged, for denying him his "rights" as Lord. When the miller's brothers complained, he killed them. A year later, the woman came to the Dreadfort, carrying a baby who clearly had Roose's strange pale eyes. He could not deny that he was the father so he gave in to her demands for a bit of money and food, and later gifted the boy with the original Reek, a servant who had some illness that caused him to stink, no matter what he did. Oh, and Roose was also rumoured to still flay members of enemy houses found on his lands without his leave. The biggest difference between Roose and Ramsay is that Roose did all this calmly, casually, and above all, quietly. There were some dark rumours, but nothing more. It seems that Ramsay was proud to display his cruelty and sadism, and enjoyed the stories that were told about him, while Roose had the wisdom to know that showing such tendencies outwardly could draw the attention of those who held more power than him, like the Starks. Roose played the game, and thus far in the books, is continuing to do so successfully. I cannot see Ramsay, who would mutilate the son of one of the High Houses so terribly without a thought of the consequences, surviving long in a world where people must account for their actions.
Roose is so much the more threatening Bolton its no contest at all. Roose was the one who worked with Tywin to make the red wedding happen. It's easy to tell how much more dangerous Roose is just by knowing about their relationship. Roose knows everything about how sadistic and violent his son is, and the fact that Ramsay even wants to kill him to become the new lord of winterfell, and Roose is totally unbothered. He is so far above his son that he doesn't care at all that he will be the target of the violence himself, he has something up his sleeve that makes even someone like Ramsay a nonfactor.
@@ThePhantomTomo I'm pretty sure that Roose knows that he could easily slip a bit of something into Ramsay's wine anytime he likes, and the fool would drink it, and never wake up. Ramsay is so far below his level that I doubt he thinks he needs to fear him. which may be his undoing, but at this point, I doubt that Roose would be so careless. It's not in his nature. Caution is what's kept him alive and in the game this long.
I get the feeling they just struck gold casting Iwan Rheon. I actually really enjoyed his darkly humorous take on Ramsay even as a book reader but its clear that they were starting to run out of ideas at that point. Battle of the Bastards and Ramsays subsequent death were some of my last momebts in the show version i reallt enjoyed. And lets not even get into how dumb Sansa being married off to him was in the first place instead of Jeyne Poole (as a fake Arya)
One problem I have is how in this whole storyline, its like all the Northern Houses just disappear. If they don't side with Ramsay then they just don't exist anymore, the only exception really being House Mormont. In the books, we see multiple Northern Houses plotting against the Boltons and we've been told multiple times in the books and show just how much the Northerners care about loyalty and guest rights, but when the Boltons take power, they all just disappear and don't care anymore. I think the show ignoring the connection between House Bolton and House Frey is important too, in the books, they are very closely tied together after the Red Wedding and the fact that many Northerners are still prisoners of the Freys and Lannisters greatly effects the storyline in the North. I think my main point is that Ramsays plot armour ruins the Northerners for me and just makes them seem either weak, selfish or non-existent
EXACTLY, like even if the Northerners weren't pro Starks, they already hated the Freys was because they lost their people at the Red Wedding, and the "North Remembers". Which gives so many iconic moments to the Northern houses in the books just on their own an adds such a tense scene in Winterfell, with the whole castle filled with people who hate and distrust one another and outside is Stannis who hates and will kill them. As well as a third group purposely messing with them too.
They simply abandoned all the precedent they had established in season 3 and earlier. It's like they thought that since they made their nut with the Red Wedding, launching the show and themselves into superstardom, they didn't need to continue with the rest of that plot at all. And I think the obvious answer as to "why" is that D&D are too lazy and/or incompetent to write complex characters with individual motivations. Add more Freys than Fat Walda and suddenly they need dialogue and values and needs and goals, and then you gotta add the lords whose values oppose theirs, and suddenly you have to actually try as a writer. And they don't know how to try. Sorry. I'm bitter. Winterfell in ADwD is my all-time favourite plotline in any fiction.
The moment that best demonstrated the show's decline in nuance imho was right before the BoB when Jon Snow challenged Ramsay to a one-on-one fight and Ramsay was framed as a coward for refusing, when in 1x09 Jaime Lannister challenged Robb to the exact same thing and Robb said "If we do your way Kingslayer, you'd win. We're not doing it your way."
I think it's ridiculous to compare the two. Jamie is an incestuous murderer who tried to kill two of Robb's innocent younger siblings for no reason. Before the war and even during the war Jamie engaged in concentrated bullshit and he even murdered his own cousin to escape captivity. Theres no way in hell Robb would be seen as a coward for not fighting Jamie because 1. Hes the King he needs to consider the lives of his subjects before his honor 😤😤 ignore what happened later 2. Hes a teenager no shit the greatest swordsman alive can kill him but everyone would believe that Jamie will cheat in some way so no takes his offer seriously. On the other hand Ramsey is a weird little rapist thst preferred to fight helpless little girls instead of a man like Jon Snow. Its telling that he murdered a little boy running from him, but he's afraid of fighting someone on equal footing so he's willing to sacrifice thousands to kill Jon instead.
@williamshelton4318 Jon asks Ramsay, "Will your men want to fight for you when they hear you wouldn't fight for them?" and after an awkward pause Ramsay goes "He's good." With Robb it seemed like an indicator of maturity that he's being pragmatic but with Ramsay it's much more surface level doesnt-do-honorable-thing-cuz-coward.
@JohnDoe-vw4zf You do not know how to digest media at all and its embarrassing. None of what you said is what actually happened. You literally made it all up. No one ever even once said Jamie would cheat and it is HILARIOUS you think Jamie would cheat whatsoever when he LITERALLY GETS ANGRY AND KILLS HIS OWN MAN FOR ATTACKING NED FROM BEHIND DURRRRRR!! God you're beyond help. Even when he is emaciated and chained at thd wrist HE DOESN'T CHEAT in a fight. You dislike the most complex character in all of the books; OH WAIT you probably never even fucking READ them did yiu lmfao. Anything over 200 pages probably scares you
Book Roose is still a moron for elevating his psychotic bastard son to Lord of Winterfell where he will inevitably commit atrocities and turn the north even more against the Bolton’s. Does not make sense for such a calculated man to let his bastard son do what he pleases.
Yeah sadly the only real writing talent was George. I think GOT really shows why not every fantasy show or novel has this tremendous success. In the end you need really something special and George was able to provide that special something.
The thing is, at the beginning of Reek/Theon and Ramsay storyline they did have a book to go with. That's in Dance, it more shows that D and D without George's help did not actually understand his writing at all. Which is even more worrying if you ask me.
@@bluewizzard8843 I dont think it is fully fair. We did get some decent scenes and dialogues not in the books. Not saying the latter half of GoT is by any way good, but they did do some decent stuff on their oen as well.
@@MrPozaidonagreed. There’s some great early season scenes that are able to expand on characters and aspects present in the books, but required writing from scratch. D n D seemed to be better at adapting and expanding existing story lines rather then creating those stories themselves
The biggest problem with Ramsay is that we already had a spoiled brat psycho villain in Joffery. We didn't need another one. The writers clearly didn't know what to do after Joffery dies so they just used Ramsay as a replacement but that was a mistake (one of many they made in the later seasons). We'd already been down that path. The fact that they gave him Sansa, too, made it even worse. It was a total rehash of better seasons.
I am SO INTERESTED in the reasons why Joffrey is one of your favourite characters, because there's a lot of stuff I like thinking about in regards to Joff and and the glimpses of his upbringing we get.
I don't think we needed more scenes to showcase how twisted and evil Ramsay was, we had plenty of that with Reek. I think something interesting they could've done, was actually in one of my least favorite decisions the show made... his marriage to Sansa. Instead of having her be a victim of yet another terrible husband, maybe they could have had them actually get along...? They hint at this new matured politically savvy Sansa when she comes down the stairs in her Disney villain girlboss dress, maybe they could've actually had her tread this path with a bit of moral ambiguity, maybe she relishes in the power that comes with her marriage to Ramsay, she resents Theon for what she thinks he did to her brothers, and is pleased with his treatment. She has to eventually choose between siding with him and siding with Jon, and betrays Ramsay during the battle of the bastards. Instead of making Ramsay the stand in villain for everyone's converging storyline, maybe she could've had a different and more complicated relationship with him. I was also just so tired of seeing Sansa hurt, it could've paralleled Daenery's story and how she married a stranger, but eventually she took control with Drogo and they were happy for a time. Myranda was interesting, but ultimately a nothing character and that time could've been given to him and Sansa bonding rather than her just being tortured... AGAIN.
Yes! This would have been amazing! So much drama. That's where the show used to excel. Rape as character development is, on top of being problematic if not handled very carefully, just so fucking lazy and boring. It's how every other mediocre action film motivates their male lead. I was very boring for both characters. Or, this just occurred to me, imagine Ramsay being a physically caring and attentive lover. And even more, imagine him being categorically against rape! Would be a fascinating angle to explore. People are so complex and contradictory. It would have been nice if he had some of that in him. He doesn't need to be sympathetic. But complexity is always good. Joffrey is a good example. He's not in the least bit sympathetic, but he's still complex enough to be very interesting.
@@IshtarNikebook ramsey was a rapist and sexual abuser if I remember correctly (though him being born from rape and him being against it could’ve been an interesting character trait as a gleeful torturer, there were enough willful rapists in the book already), but show Ramsey could’ve gone differently if handled correctly. Actually, to your point, I wonder if he would still be a rapist, but then for whatever reason on the wedding night DIDNT assault Sansa like she and the audience expected. Maybe his intention would be initially to fuck with her and give her a false sense of security like he did with Theon, but then he ends up sorta fascinated by Sansa’s savviness and cunning. I wouldn’t want an actual romance or an “uwu look he’s just a misunderstood torturer rapist who had this one exception bc Sansa is smart”, but they could have had an incredibly interesting push and pull dangerous game between them, testing each other out. And then Sansa ends up outwitting him and playing him for a fool in the end by betraying him to her brother Boom you get the morally gray Sansa character arc born out of tense circumstances WITHOUT having her character raped for the drama and weird voyeuristic torture porn.
I know you didn’t use the term probably to avoid this very argument), but Show Ramsey is an evil Gary Stu. He has no flaws (re: his abilities), he succeeds with seeming lack of effort, and is always 1-3 steps ahead of others. Tywin and Cersei and even Walter Frey have layers and flaws and are interesting. Ramsey is just The Concept of Evil given arms and legs.
@@fightingmedialounge519 I noted his lack of flaws re: his abilities. Also, his downfall isn’t even from pursuing his sadism. He simply didn’t know about the Vale knights. Otherwise dude would have won. I consider Shiow Ramsey to be an inferior Palpatine. Palpatine also was just THE BEST at everything but he’s also spent his whole life building up plans slowly that eventually worked (for a couple decades). And his ultimate downfall (in RotJ) indeed was his overconfidence. When your fatal flaw leads to your actual defeat, that’s decent storytelling. Ramsey lost due to bad intel. Maybe he had “a dozen good men” on scouting duty he would have won.
@@TrueYellowDart I mean, his abilities doesn't negate his clear flaws. Except that is his downfall as the knights wouldn't even be there if his cruelty didn't lead to sansa and theon trying to escape. Also even knee they were coming he couldn't have stopped because he lacked the man power to. Even holding up in winterfell wouldn't have worked as seen in the actual events of the show. That's a pretty short sighted comparison. Tywin if anything is more so the Palpatine of the series where they both find their successes come in large from manipulation and political maneuvering. Where as with show ramsay amongst the several things he's terrible at, he lacks the ability to foster genuine loyalty aside from one person; with all his major alliances coming from the circumstances rather than anything he actually did. He's more Darth maul if anything. Which is what happened to ramsay. Roose called it when he pointed out him acting like a mad dog woul lead to him dying like one. No, he lost because made sure nearly everyone hated him and reasons to see him dead.
@@williamshelton4318 I like Palpatine as a certain type of villain. He’s not particularly compelling because no part of me can identify with his goals or personality, but he’s a fantastic Ultimate Evil Bastard.
I think the difference in the fan reaction to Ramsey compared to Joffrey comes from the fact that Ramsey is kinda in the same league as Littlefinger and Tywin - where their brand of villainy fulfils a power fantasy for some people. I don't think Joffrey makes it into the same league because he's spoilt and whiney - which leaves him looking somewhat pathetic by comparison. I think the fact that he's a child also plays into it - I mean, remember the fan reaction to Olly? It doesn't feel like a coincidence to me that two of the most hated characters are young teenagers. That's my two cents on it, at least. Just editing to say that I think that there's a couple other factors at play as well. I think the more realistic and grounded a villain is, the more genuine the hate they inspire is. We are far more likely to encounter a spoiled brat whose wealth and authority lets them get away with everything than we are to be subject to the extreme torture Ramsey put Theon through.
I think of it that people have never met someone like Ramsey or Tywin in real life, so they find them entertainingly evil. Like, very few people have met a serial killer or warlord in real life. People have probably met a creep like Littlefinger, but creepy people aren't as entertaining as Littlefinger because he's able pull off manipulating people so well. But people have met spoiled bullies like Joffrey, so they dislike him much more. People hate Olly because he killed Ygritte who the audience came to love as Jon's love interest. It's the same way people came to hate Bronn for trying to kill Dany's dragons because the audience came to care about them. Like, audience members cared about Ygritte and the dragons more than they did Olly or Bronn. But Olly didn't kill Ygritte just because, Ygritte was a wildling warrior who was fighting against him. She wasn't an a civilian woman or anything. There really that isn't a good reason to hate Olly or Bronn, they're just soldiers on the opposite side of a war.
I think Ollie was also a very boring character. He felt like he was made to pull at my heartstrings, but nothing more. It was like he wasn't even part of the world where Ramsey very much was. Ollie had no real relationship with anybody but Jon. He was protected by Jon, killed Jon's girlfriend, was forgiven by Jon and then killed Jon. Original show characters never seemed to click with me and I think at least partly that was because they were never nicely woven into the story. After a while even an expanded figure like Bron went there, at least for me.
@RikkaP Yeah, there isn't as much depth to Olly compared to the others. It just doesn't seem like a coincidence to me that the child characters illicit a stronger reaction than the adults.
@@oeurydice I am not so sure about it. I also like to think that my reactions to, say, Arya in book and show differ a lot (and Arya was a child at the beginning and, if memory serves right, was a fan fave from the start). What I will give you any time is that child characters are harder to get into (as readers or writers) as we are adults. We see the world around us quite differently and have different relationships. Still, I do enjoy childrens books (Neverending story has been (and stayed) a favourite of mine since I was 11 or something), but I might be strange there.
They had the character making mistakes in The Game but suffered zero consequences unlike many other characters in the series. D&D used it like a crutch: "Good" characters faced catastrophic consequences and got labeled stupid for one small mistake, usually outside their control, but "bad" characters could act with impunity. For REASONS never revealed. Ramsay had some THICK plot armor. Not for moving the story forward, but for audience shock value. It didn't take long for the character to become stale and exhausting.
I tend to think the books criticize evil characters more than good ones. Even "pragmatic" ones like Tywin, Roose, and Littlefinger have flaws that can be exploited. Having a generally evil and malevolent disposition by nature tends to trip you up in ways when you have to coexist with other people in a society. Roose might have betrayed the Starks, but now almost all the lords of the North are working at betraying him and even he knows it. Being this conspicuously evil yet still suffering no consequences is indeed plot armor.
It felt so much like torture pr0n with Ramsay especially in the last seasons. Also glad to know there's no explicit rape scenes in the book and that makes me feel much better on checking them out.
Yeah, don't go into the books expecting there to be nothing. There are still some moments and what happens to Theon is 100% worse, but it's also never gratuitous. Mostly it's implied without needing to show, or there is a reason for it, but I can certainly remember uncomfortable book scenes
Yeah, technically true, but there are some extremely graphic moments. I'm thinking specifically of when Arya overhears Chiswyk. There's also just... the sheer amount of rape in the books. It feels like every 5 pages, there's something to do with someone being raped. I'm not opposed to depicting the horrors of war at all, but it irks me that it always happens to other, unimportant girls as set dressing to show how dark and edgy the world is. Not that I want any of our POV characters to get raped mind you, but it's a real shame how it's effect is never explored the same way as other violence, like Jaime's dismemberment, Bran's paralysis, and Theon's torture (and of course, Theon's sexual abuse is only implied and never expounded upon). /rant
I was born in a very large town called Bolton and the northern side is dominated by a hill called Winter Hill; winter Hill, winterfell. Idk if maybe JRR Martin saw them on a map or it is just a coincidence, but cool to think about.
Ramsey had such potential as a character in this story... I don't blame them for not being able to pull it off, though. Ewan Rheon did a tremendous job eitherway!!!
I'll take a quick stab at why Ramsey wasn't hated in the same way as Cersei and Joffrey, his first target was Theon. Someone we really wanted to see get some kind of revenge put on him. Ramsey did that for us, so even though he's terrible, it started him off on a good spot. Joffrey starts off getting a direwolf killed early on. Cerei is responsible for putting Ned Stark in a bad spot, (yes, Ned being who he is also did that) and Joffrey is the one who ordered him executed. I would bet for most Ned Stark is a fan favorite at that point. He was for me. I read the books first, and he was then too. The Starks in both mediums are portrayed as far more likeable at this point so it's no wonder. Add that with two fantastic actors playing Cersei and Joffrey, it's no wonder they were more hated. Nice to see he's acting again too. Ramsey is also chaotic evil, which is fun, though he got way too predictable later.
I think you're spot on here. It's hard to sympathize with a character you're so angry at. In the books we got to spend time in Theon's head, so we knew more about him. He was more three dimensional. In the show, he doesn't have that same sort of depth, so how can you expect an audience to feel bad for someone they loathe.
Yeah, you're correct. Theon betrayed the Starks and got a lot of innocent people killed including the two farmer boys and that Maester. It's debatable whether he deserved the punishment he got but, in my opinion, he did deserve it so I thought it was funny when Ramsey was eating the sausage. Ramsey does overstay his welcome, though, and I got pretty sick of him by the end. It was clear that the writers just used him as a replacement for Joffrey but we'd already seen one spoiled brat psycho. We didn't need another.
Yeah that's definitely a reason, which I find sad because I very much empathise with Theon... although he does do something bad towards the main characters and, even early on, the show was more interested in punching down on him as someone pompous and pathetic for humour, rather than someone troubled and insecure
@@CosmicPhilosopher Wow, I totally disagree. Theon was the one character I found much more three dimensional in the show, and you feel like he was truly caught between a rock and a hard place. I watched S2 as I read ACOK and I thought Theon's storyline was done way better in the show. He actually has conflicting feelings about his two families. There's actual drama stemming from the fact that he was raised in Winterfell. In the books (I just finished ACOK so it's fresh), he's the same generically nasty, entitled highborn that we've seen 100 times already. He's planning to betray the Starks from the moment he leaves for Pyke, he's even more entitled, he has 0 affection for the people of Winterfell, he rapes Kyra "until she was bruised and sobbing" because he's stressed over a nightmare, he threatens to have his men gang rape Palla (again) if Farlen doesn't help him, he agrees to let Reek rape Palla if he can get the Boltons to help, and he prepares a noose to hang a child to stop Rodrick from taking the castle back. He doesn't have a single redeeming quality, and he's not even particularly conflicted about it. Idk, I didn't even love to hate him, I just found him boring and insufferable.
They ruined his character by not introducing him in season 2, Ramsay commits horrible atrocities in book 2 and then blames it all on oltheon and then tortues theon for the crimes he didn't commit. Ramsays torture is partially sadistic but also partially so theon would never tell anyone the truth; bran and rickon are alive, ramsay killed ser rodrick, ramsay burned winterfell.
I don’t know why but there is a group of people who like it when men get there junk cut off and I’ve found them in Twitter threads so people may like him more for that as well and then say he was funny or something
I'm kind of a hater of philandering men like Theon so I found it funny Theon's junk was cut off but Ramsay himself wasn't funny only his treatment of Theon but not of the others that's actually sickening
I genuinely am curious what demographic of people it is that send death threats to actors and actresses who play Characters they hate. They did it to the actress who played Skyler white in breaking bad so much that she pretty much avoids the spotlight with the breaking bad fandom .I'm starting to wonder if maybe it's just a large number of people who are literally mentally ill and don't know better. How does a person not understand that an actor isn't the character they play? I can only assume it's people who are not right in the head because no mentally stable person could make that mistake.
It really resonated with me when you listed all of Joffrey's different character dynamics. Joff really is a diverse character, and Ramsay is barely a character at all.
I never understood the perception of Joffrey vs Ramsay, I always enjoyed hating Joffrey but with Ramsay I just wanted him gone. Everyone else seemed to always feel the opposite way for some reason. Joffrey was just a little shithead with too much power while Ramsay was a sadistic sociopath. I found the former much more entertaining and compelling while the latter was just torture porn most of the time
Id say the overall plot writing is what damaged Ramsay's character more than Ramsay's character being poorly written. He stayed consistent throughout the entire show, you said that was him being one note but I don't think that's a bad thing. They did make him way more powerful and smart then he should have been. But overall it was the lack of consequences he faced from his actions but that is the plot writing not his character. It's like what happened to Cerci in season 8. Meaning that he made no real wrong decisions that caused his downfall and he just got nuked by an entire army sneaking up on him from behind. (How the knights of the Aryn managed to occupy mot calin with no one knowing ill never now). So his character wasn't bad or ruined. The writing of the plot was just poor.
@@williamshelton4318 not really. He gained nothing from killing walda, and killing his dad took away a valuable strategist from his side who could have maybe convinced the other house to help. I guess it made him warden of the north, for a week.
I think after Theon's junk was cut off I stopped caring about the torture scenes. They became too repetitive and not particularly interesting. I did feel initially that Theon needed to be punished seriously for burning children, but in my eyes he has been punished enough after getting thoroughly broken down.
I found that the Ramsay-torturing-Theon storyline valuable in that it helped me improve my empathy skills. I feel like it really helped me understand, emotionally, why abuse victims might not leave their abuser. I knew, intellectually, that the abuser was at fault, not the victim, and that asking why the victim doesn't just leave was victim-blaming, but internally, I didn't get it and would feel really frustrated. This helped me get it, I think. I know most cases are nowhere this extreme or severe, but seeing something this extreme first I was able to see it and can apply the knowledge to other, less extreme examples, while something more subtle would have likely gone over my head.
Kinda goes to show you can get something positive out of art, even if the art in question is messy, bad, gratuitous, or poorly executed. Glad it taught you something!
I think the show made me feel bad for Theon, even after everything he did at Winterfell, but then they just kept going… and going… and going… and going…
The “20 good men” scene was so egregious. Just D&D ruining another character in Stannis for the purpose of making Ramsey seem OP, when he’s not. Oh god, and Little Finger not knowing ANYTHING about Ramsey… 🤦♂️ So bad
Ramsay had a huge amount of plot armor because the show writers liked him a lot for some reason, he deformed the north's story to a degree where it left it unrecognizable from the books and ruined it. Only when he faced the even bigger plot armor of Jon he was defeated but everything about his character is the bad writing that is also in the last seasons in some cases even worst but people for some reason refuse to accept it.
While tactically gifted,militarily speaking,he was quite wastefull during the battle of the bastards. I've played enough total war to know you don't send ALL your cav in first and then procede to decimate them with friendly arrow fire,then not hold back at least a few units of infantry as reserve...
I only watched GoT in 2023 after getting ill and finally making time to binge watch the whole thing. Since then I have massively enjoyed several content makers exploring so many different angles of the characters from the show, and i’ve learned more about the books which i’ve not read. I don’t know if/when i’ll ever get tired of these videos, but for now I really enjoy them. Looking forward to you sharing why Joffrey is one of your favourite characters at some point soon, I hope!
People laughed at the sausage thing? I just made me feel more ick and i tend to skip those sequences on rewatches. Berserk has a similar segment in the manga and 97 anime, where a character is broken down by torture. I think they handle it better with one scene that's takes place after the character has been down there for awhile. The torturer taunts him and you get some impmications of whats been done. You get the characters thoughts where you see his sanity slipping. You get what the character thinks is a hallucination. Then its over. It is maybe half the length of one of these Ramsey scenes but accompmishes everything it does.
Lots of people out there who don’t feel empathy towards others way more than you would think mainly because they learn to hide it and fake it to fit in and they are the ones who mistake empathy for being soft
13:35 Little Finger SAID that he didn't know anything about Ramsey. I see that as absolutely consistent with Little Finger's character, in that he knew a lot about Ramsey and so he knew that telling Ramsey that he didn't know about him would cause Ramsey to try everything to prove himself and his infamy to Petr, and in doing so lose sight of the important bigger picture. The real tragedy of the writing is how D&D then just discarded this potentially-great setup in their determination to hurry towards the end of the show. SMH.
I appreciate your putting into words something I couldn't quite put my finger on, while watching. I think the best scene to encapsulate this feeling for me was, ironically, as Jon Snow has Ramsay on the ground, beating the ever-living crap outta him. All I could think, with every cutaway, especially when Jon looks over to Sansa watching: "Don't turn your back on this bastard!" Clearly beaten. And yet my mind is still playing tricks on me, expecting something somehow to frustrate justice. A good showrunner teaches you how to watch their show, like a good writer teaches you how to read. They train you to understand the rules they're playing by. Subtly, sometimes even undetectably. D&D, in the end, had me even doubting the obvious. (And connectedly, it's also how they lost much of their audience in the end. By breaking the rules they'd taught their audience to play by...)
G.o.t had an odd way of not dwelling on serious injuries that need medical attention that wasn't too hand. Both Theon and Jamie's removed body parts would need work to stop the wound from losing blood and killing them.
The books go into decent detail about Jaime becoming super feverish and weak from his hand and having to have qyburn treat him with maggots to eat the dead infected flesh, cleaning it with boiled wine, etc. Every thing that happened to theon happened in the past because he disappears entirely after book 2 until book 5 where he's down to 7 fingers, missing toes, half a mouthful of broken teeth, and potentially losing his manhood(I don't think it's ever explicitly stated that he was gelded by Ramsey but there's dialogue that implies it)
@@jublington fair enough that all sounds reasonable. For me it's more that Jamie has an open artery that has about 5 mins to be... We knotted or stitched, before he's dead.
@@bogstandardash3751 obvs ur gonna have to suspend disbelief a bit it is fiction after all. I don't remember if they cauterize it or not, but honestly idk enough about anatomy to know if that would even help at all. He was already malnourished and then they have days to march before they get to harrenhal where qyburn is so obviously that would probably kill any man in real life.
I love that idea you brought up about how everyone wants to kill him for the same "you traumatized someone" reasons. That's pretty dang boring and I've never thought about it. Like if this was just some single 90 minute fantasy movie, that'd be fine but it gets so dragged out with nothing changing until he dies. great video!
I think the real Reek may have abused Ramsey as a child, with Ramsey forming some stolkholms syndrome in relation to Reek. Ramsey was prepared, willing and able to cast Reek aside for his own well being. Then Ramsey goes on to twist a broken man into a hollow recreation of his abuser, in a Reverse of what the twos relationship may have been like. Instead of His Reek as we see in Theon. He may be been 'His Ramsey' to the real Reek.
In many ways its part of the epidemic of being able to show close to everything you want. The beauty of book and audio is you can hide and reveal easier. In many ways people are desensitised enough to have to see every scene in order to know it happened, where it is often more disturbing to allow a person to imagine what you dont see. There is a famous scene in Flash Gordon where Ming tells his allows his daughter to be tortured with something we never see but we hear the screams after she begs as if its the worse possible thing. I think GOT got to a level where they got away with so many things they were just doing to see how far they could go.
It's just lazy, really. They could have used more nuance, but you're right in that it seems D&D were thinking, "HBO lets us get away with anything! Let's do it!" See also: Littlefinger directing two women to have sex while he spouts exposition.
Sansas R scene taints her already overly degraded character and it's too much, she never really gains her power back and she also never gets enough fondness about her where she gains a base rallying for her Win...i always felt funny ab which way she was gonna go..ask far as making her ever side with that monster Ramsy would be unforgiving in an character that was already on ice as far as liability, depth or rewarding qualities
I think characters in GOT were seriously misunderstood by the directors and when Martain stepped back it shows. I think the characters are more like peices in chess or probably Shogi as they come back from the dead. Ramsey and a number of other characters are like the knight which essentially really messes up the game, by doing something unpredictable. Martin like a number of writers almost let their characters loose on the world and get surprised at what happens. Taking Theon creates a number of consequences which is a large part of his importance so building the extra stuff on detracts from the interesting stuff.
Ramsey in the show was absolutely and totally a self insert character, someone(s) with the authority to influence the plot this much were enjoying everything about him. Same as John in the end I guess. Pulling back from the details and looking at the broad plot strokes the decisions are so poor. At the end of the show I was left feeling like there were decent writers trying to make increasingly short story notes with in the show.
My biggest disappointment when it comes to the show is how they mishandled ramsey. Despite the batshit endings everyone got i can still read the books and see how we get there. Ramseys show version ruins what little story he provides in the books and destroys sansa's story too. If they'd just been patient and listened fo grrm and maybe idk made any attempt to establish a storyline in dorne just imagine what this show couldve been
I wholeheartedly agree with the video and I thank you for summing it all up so well. The only thing I'd add is that there is one instance of the- uhm *practical application of Reek* and that is when Ramsay sends him to convince the Ironborn in Moat Calin to surrender. But yeah that's also not really presented as a high stakes thing for Ramsay.
There's a pretty funny metal song about 20 Good Men on RUclips and it riffs on the Ramsay invincibility by implying that the 20 good Men Ramsay brought were sheer badasses like Kratos, Aragorn, Chuck Norris etc in order to pull off that plot-defying stunt with Stannis lol
I always thought Ramsay tortured Theon into Reek because Ramsay was envious of Theon fur being a prince and heir to one of the seven kingdoms, while he was a bastard. He took a prince and made him a bastard’s slave.
I'll die on this hill, but the Battle of the Bastards was silly. Didn't enjoy it at all, and at the end, Ramsay's last fight was laughable. Why didn't he shoot Jon when his back was turned, instead of the giant? Made no sense. Is he stupid? It's not for an honorable fight; Ramsay doesn't have any honor. And Jon should've stayed dead. They just kind of yanked him around and made him stupid after they ran out of stuff for him to do
My theory behind the immense love for Ramsay’s character in the show is the fact that Iwan Rheon is attractive. Show Ramsay is like you said attractive, slightly comedic, and was sociopathic enough that he knows how to be charismatic. Book Ramsay isn’t handsome or charismatic. Lena Heady is a beautiful woman but there were no redeeming qualities in Cersei (except the love of her children. That and her cheek bones). Jack Gleeson got the Tom Felton treatment. That being said as well as Draco was portrayed, he doesn’t hold a candle to Joffrey Lannister, oh I mean Baratheon. There were no redeeming qualities for Joffrey, Cersei at least used to excuse that she did it to protect her legacy and children. Joffrey just enjoying torturing people just for the thrill. If Ramsay’s character design followed the book, Iwan would also be getting the Draco treatment.
Huh I never actually read the scene with the candle as Ramsay waiting in the broken tower, I thought Theon just immediately chickened out and took the candle to Ramsay's chambers
I really liked Ramsey for the first two seasons we met him in. Basically right up until season 5 when he got suddenly absurdly powerful for no reason, i thought his character was great-and not despite the gratitous torture of Theon in those seasons either, i think that worked, but only because theyre both fictional characters. If i met a Ramsey in real life, I'd absolutely run screaming lmao
If you would ever like to read a book that gives a similar amount of discomfort as Ramsay's scenes, I suggest the book of human skin by Michelle lovric. It makes the air feel heavy and your stomach turn (and is occasionally boring I will admit) but I had to finish it. It's been over a decade since I read it so perhaps it's not as bad as I remember but ive never forgotten how it made me feel.
TheDragonDemands I think his name is did a great video on the Battle of the Bastards and how it could have fixed everything. The Castarks and the Umbers should have turned on him as a consequence of Ramsays relentless brutality intact the seeds were being planted for this to potentially happen. Problem is DND likely felt this would have resulted in a less epic battle so they pansied out and went for a much more Hollywood direction. It literally makes no sense that some of them would literally fight to the death for Ramsay after all the pain and suffering he has caused their houses.
Book Ramsey quite frankly terrified me at points. Hate to admit it but TV show Ramsey got the occasional chuckle out of me from his completely over the top attitude at times
fantastic points. you hit the nail on the head of why ppl seemed more drawn to house bolton in the show than books. also ramsay being incredibly handsome in the show probably help in this case too 😂
Yes and it was bad to cast him he's way too handsome to play Ramsay and it made his character read differently he was a brute akin to a highschool jock who molests schoolgirls while Iwan's portrayel made him appear like a twisted gentleman akin to Alex DeLarge from a Clockwork Orange
I wouldn't be surprised if Littlefinger's comment was meant to plant a seed encouraging Ramsey to be "louder" with his actions. Destabilize his neighbors further.
Ramsay made my life hurt, I’m literally rewatching the whole show now for the second time as I didn’t watch GOT until HOD came out and I can’t wait to get to his death lol😂 bro was evil on a total different level.
I respect your opinions but I disagree mostly show reek/ramsey scenes were fine its meant to be a dark show. But main point I wanna make is book Ramsey is very politically and tactically smart. He kidnaps and marys Lady Hornewood potentially going from a bastard into a lord. When that scheme fails and sir Rod attacks he swaps places with reek disguising himself. He convinces Theon to not only burn the bodys of the butcher kids which makes people think Rob is the last living male stark, but he ingratiates with Theon so much that hes allowed to leave Winterfell, he then proceeds to come back and destroys sir Rods army despite being outnumbered 5:1, tricks Theon into opening the gates yielding Winterfell to Ramsey, and then he gets Moat Calin to surrender without a man lost. Also side note, the scene in the show where Theon carries the candle, he goes directly to Ramseys room, Ramsey isn't just waiting there at the tower like an omnipotent creature XD
Book Ramsay is tactically smart but not politically, in my opinion. He's great at cunning trickery to get something he wants, but not so good at the bigger picture and the long term, partly due to his impulsive side. That said, I did kinda make a similar argument in my character analysis video of him, he's nowhere near as stupid as people say he is in the books. He's actually quite smart, just also short sighted and unrestra
Ramsay is the same type of character as Cersei though, a villain sue power fantasy who slowly went from an actual character into an awful excuse for a plot device who was unkillable because the writers needed him around to put asses on couches.
I dunno, all I'm saying is "I can perfectly see why people find this funny. I don't personally but I've got no problem with that directly", not sure how that translates to desperately trying to understand humour
5:58 that’s what makes TV RamJam better. He has WAY more personality in the show than in the book. If D&D had been faithful to book Ramsay, he’d be dull AF!
idk I think he was fine is as he was, basically the Joker in the North. I liked that he was this mysterious villain who kinda came out of nowhere, he was a charismatic villain at a time when the show was lacking one. Not every villain needs a complicated backstory and it's not like Ramsay was ever a very nuanced character in the books.
Gonna watch this later but I needed to say my piece first The casting of Iwan Rheon has utterly ruined Ramsay. I really thing he's a fantastic actor but he's way too hot and has too much charisma, unlike the gross and disturbing book Ramsay Now, I can't read the books without picturing the actor as Ramsay and let me tell you, the experience is deeply confusing because, as much as I find everything that Ramsay does terrible, there's a tiny part of me that keeps thinking "yes daddy, tie me up and flay me alive"
I wish the show had been made by people who had an actual interest in the well thought out backgrounds of the characters, GRRM is interested in where people come from, how they became who they are. Joffrey is absolutely a child raised by a disinterested father and a narcissist mother, he wasn't going to get out of this as a kind, empathetic person and what they saw was a brat that deserves to be slapped for comedic effect, nothing more complex there. I feel strongly about him because I was raised by a narcissist and I'm grateful now that I wasn't the favourite child, I see what it did to my sister. I think they were attracted to Ramsay because he is so easy to turn into a one note villain, that's something they understand, he's much more extreme than the more grey, nuanced characters even though when you look closer there is more nuance (as your last video on him demonstrated so well).
I wouldn't go that far considering they acknowledge the complexity in characters like theon. Also the books to suggest joffrey was just a bad person form the start.
It was all just too expected for me. Like an evil for the sake of evil son of the New Warden of the North. You know exactly where that is going. Being part of a weird narrative trip to repeatedly rape Sansa to help "develop" her character. Not hard to surmise that either Theon or Sansa would kill him because at this point in the series, main characters had plot armor so nothing bad is going to happen to Sansa or Jon or Theon in the long run. He kind of felt like a filler villain with an obvious story arc, just to occupy time until the final bosses (Wight Walkers, Cersei, Dany) get their final setup. There is not a whole lot to pull from the books other than his malignant nature and hints of betraying his father. In that way he gave the show writers more freedom to play around with his character and he basically became a sadistic troll and felt one note to me. In the books their is a sort of cunning to him behind his wild and cruel nature. You see it in the way he wormed his way into Theon's ear and helped take out the Iron islanders from within. The show riffs off of this in his introduction but then you never see any more of that through the rest of his time on the show. Idk he seemed like he was there to meet the show's depravity quota and nothing more than that.
Kinda shocking to hear you say he was praised online. I actually hated every one of his scenes, so much so that I have to skip through most of them. You do make an interesting point that the very first time I watched the beginning of the torture it was ‘shocking’ in a compelling way. But like you say immediately afterwards, it becomes just unnecessary after one time, especially considering his relatively small stature in significance. You’re right, in the end, I think his character actually did the show detrimentally. He’s a good actor though, I’ll admit. Even as a character he’s entertaining. But for me, it was way too much. I much prefer watching the villainry of Cersei because she feels real. I don’t like her character but the show doesn’t tell me not to. She does so because decisions she makes. Whereas with Ramsay, I feel like I’m being screamed at. It reminds me of the fictional nature of the show, which imo is not good.
Walder was a villain but the Freys stay put in the Riverlands with the Lannisters and thus second fiddle. At least they showed Theon flipping out over the horn (vuvuzela) treatment. TV Ramsey as in the books setup the killing of the men Roose put on him to spy on him. Book Ramsey was a big villain, starving Lady Hornwood to death after she ate her fingers was particuarly cruel. Joffrey was inept, incapable and weak. His position, cruelty and family were his only attributes.
The 20 Good Men scene makes sense if you assume he just negotiated with Stannis' mercenaries - abandon his cause, fire his supplies, and you won't have to freeze to death trying to lay siege to Winterfell. That's what I was expecting, displaying the fickleness or mercenaries when things go badly. Later Game of Thrones seems allergic to politics and consequences.
In the book, after having spent close to two years getting everything a person can do on another done on him by Ramsey, Theon, even in his Reek state, looks at Roose and realizes that "he has more cruelty in his little finger than Ramsay has in his whole body". The real antagonist in the North was never Ramsay. It was always Roose. Ramsay is the wild card, which will, probably, bring his father down before going ballistic and causing a burst of horror, but it's gonna be just that - a burst. His own brand of villainy is simply unsustainable in the long run in the circumstances Westeros is in right now. Ramsay is simply a character who has a headstart due to his amorality and sadism, but helplessly leans more and more into it, until it becomes a detriment. The only way he surpasses his father is that he's the literal incarnation of Roose's hybris. The fact that they chose to leave Roose in the background and focused on Ramsay's theatrics is just pure sensationalism over competency and understanding of the characters. I'm pretty sure Iwan Rheon is a great enough actor that he could have pulled off book! Ramsay satisfactorily as well, but they'd have to significantly reduce his presence for his character to be effective. Michael McElhatton too, they wasted in the end, which is a damn pity, because he was pulling off a great Roose which is no easy feat. Downgrading the father-son relationship was truly a missed opportunity. Imagine if they'd done that with Tywin-Tyrion.
The words I now use to describe the downfall of GoT is that they fetishized violence. Their dedication to, and dependence on, Ramsay was the most obvious and maybe even the catalyst. Normalizing and validating Ramsay through comedy and charisma communicated a certain lack of character value and encouraged audience members to accept and even identify with that lack of value. And it went on and on, right up to his final scene. They took his popularity as a cue to double down on senseless violence over purposeful and narrative violence, and you can see the uptick in blood and brutality after season 4, when they started giving Ramsay more scenes.
Just found these videos the other day and love the analysis. As far as why I like Ramsay as a villain more than Joffrey, personally, it's that he does all his own dirty work and lacks the cowardice Joffrey sometimes displays. It makes him more.. respectable, in a way? Though that sounds weird to say about a character so unapologetically malicious.
We shoulda known from the beginning Dumb & Dumber were not fit to make this show. They got rid of half the Magical & Cool stuff from the books and only made it thru seasons 1 & 4 cuz the books were actually finished. But they truly didn't know wyd they were doing.
But I think the idea that people liked Ramsey and laughed at Theon speaks more about the audience than it fires to be Ramsey. I was but one of those people that saw Theon the way Ramsey did. He thought he was vile, maybe occasionally humorous, but mostly vile and couldn’t wait for him to get his comeuppance. When my roommate watched it for the first time I told her, you’ll hate Joffrey, but Joffrey’s got nothing on Ramsey.
The desecration of Theon balanced the immoral decision he made earlier in the series. We slowly see how he turns his back on the Starks with each act, one goofy and/or fatal act after another. Likewise, the many exploitations shown on screen show how further down those decisions led him. I do get your point overall, if all you're doing is examining scenes of one character and only with that pov in mind.
when theon was not saved, thats when the show started going to shit. if you show someone that 100% should get out of there but that cant because plot...............
ramsay was the poor mans joffrey. he stopped being interesting once Theon fully became Reek.after that he was just some unstoppable flat obstacle for Sansa to reclaim winterfell and the satisfaction of that is completely taken away from her because Jon ends up taking all the credit.
Great video. Reminds me very much of Arya. They knew she was a fan favourite so she became this unbeatable avenger who effortlessly killed a bunch of foes.
Wasn't he taking it out on theon because while he was a bastard and not counted as an heir yet when he was turning Theon into reek; wasn't it a jealous sadism that theon was treated as a noble son even though he was a traitor to the north?
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"It's like the sharper an artist's pencil is, the freer they are to to focus on the art."
Everyone is different so don't take this as me saying that you are categorically wrong, but for me I find the opposite is true, especially for the average person who will be using the ubiquitous #2 pencil, or HB depending what side of the pond you re on... or if you are one of those wanna be wallabees Middle Earth.
Sharper pencils are more likely to dent the paper as you push down and drag it across the paper. It becomes impossible to fully erase at that point and you might have to start over. I was taught to use a rounded off tip so you can shade more evenly and you can sharpen it when it's time to do finishing work. But to each their own. I personally am too scared to use a fresh sharpened too early but I'm faaaaar from an expert.
I just want any young viewers or people just getting onto to understand the difference and know that the expression used in the video very often doesn't apply. So try the other way too, with very blunt pencils(I would use a pocket knife to carefully shave the wood closest to the tip off to expose a few more millimeters of te lead but not enough to make it easily breakable.
Good luck kids!
Question could you do a therapy analyze of the characters from Law & Order
In the books, I always found Roose to be the most terrifying of the two. Ramsay is a wild sadist with no restraint, but Rooses' calm demeanor feels more chilling to me.
I love Iwan Rheon's performance but I agree they made him too OP.
From my pov, having dropped the show mid-season 5, and going by my knowledge of the books where Roose is still very much alive, I have to agree, he is by far the more frightening Bolton. Roose Bolton is a cunning strategist who was one of the minds behind the Red Wedding. He looked Catelyn Stark dead in the eye, knowing that she wouldn't live out the night. He also had a long standing grudge against Ned for revoking his "right" of First Night, meaning that he'd get first dibs on any common woman married in his lands before her husband, whether she consented or not. In fact, (I'm not sure whether this was mentioned in the show), this was how Ramsay was conceived. A miller was married without Roose's consent, and Roose only became aware of this when he found the miller's young wife washing clothes by the river. He had his way with the woman, and had the miller hanged, for denying him his "rights" as Lord. When the miller's brothers complained, he killed them. A year later, the woman came to the Dreadfort, carrying a baby who clearly had Roose's strange pale eyes. He could not deny that he was the father so he gave in to her demands for a bit of money and food, and later gifted the boy with the original Reek, a servant who had some illness that caused him to stink, no matter what he did. Oh, and Roose was also rumoured to still flay members of enemy houses found on his lands without his leave.
The biggest difference between Roose and Ramsay is that Roose did all this calmly, casually, and above all, quietly. There were some dark rumours, but nothing more. It seems that Ramsay was proud to display his cruelty and sadism, and enjoyed the stories that were told about him, while Roose had the wisdom to know that showing such tendencies outwardly could draw the attention of those who held more power than him, like the Starks. Roose played the game, and thus far in the books, is continuing to do so successfully. I cannot see Ramsay, who would mutilate the son of one of the High Houses so terribly without a thought of the consequences, surviving long in a world where people must account for their actions.
Roose is so much the more threatening Bolton its no contest at all. Roose was the one who worked with Tywin to make the red wedding happen.
It's easy to tell how much more dangerous Roose is just by knowing about their relationship. Roose knows everything about how sadistic and violent his son is, and the fact that Ramsay even wants to kill him to become the new lord of winterfell, and Roose is totally unbothered. He is so far above his son that he doesn't care at all that he will be the target of the violence himself, he has something up his sleeve that makes even someone like Ramsay a nonfactor.
@@ThePhantomTomo I'm pretty sure that Roose knows that he could easily slip a bit of something into Ramsay's wine anytime he likes, and the fool would drink it, and never wake up. Ramsay is so far below his level that I doubt he thinks he needs to fear him. which may be his undoing, but at this point, I doubt that Roose would be so careless. It's not in his nature. Caution is what's kept him alive and in the game this long.
I wish book Ramsey could have been in GOT. He was a much more interesting and menacing character, imo. So was book Roose.
I get the feeling they just struck gold casting Iwan Rheon. I actually really enjoyed his darkly humorous take on Ramsay even as a book reader but its clear that they were starting to run out of ideas at that point.
Battle of the Bastards and Ramsays subsequent death were some of my last momebts in the show version i reallt enjoyed. And lets not even get into how dumb Sansa being married off to him was in the first place instead of Jeyne Poole (as a fake Arya)
One problem I have is how in this whole storyline, its like all the Northern Houses just disappear. If they don't side with Ramsay then they just don't exist anymore, the only exception really being House Mormont. In the books, we see multiple Northern Houses plotting against the Boltons and we've been told multiple times in the books and show just how much the Northerners care about loyalty and guest rights, but when the Boltons take power, they all just disappear and don't care anymore.
I think the show ignoring the connection between House Bolton and House Frey is important too, in the books, they are very closely tied together after the Red Wedding and the fact that many Northerners are still prisoners of the Freys and Lannisters greatly effects the storyline in the North. I think my main point is that Ramsays plot armour ruins the Northerners for me and just makes them seem either weak, selfish or non-existent
EXACTLY, like even if the Northerners weren't pro Starks, they already hated the Freys was because they lost their people at the Red Wedding, and the "North Remembers". Which gives so many iconic moments to the Northern houses in the books just on their own an adds such a tense scene in Winterfell, with the whole castle filled with people who hate and distrust one another and outside is Stannis who hates and will kill them. As well as a third group purposely messing with them too.
They simply abandoned all the precedent they had established in season 3 and earlier. It's like they thought that since they made their nut with the Red Wedding, launching the show and themselves into superstardom, they didn't need to continue with the rest of that plot at all.
And I think the obvious answer as to "why" is that D&D are too lazy and/or incompetent to write complex characters with individual motivations. Add more Freys than Fat Walda and suddenly they need dialogue and values and needs and goals, and then you gotta add the lords whose values oppose theirs, and suddenly you have to actually try as a writer. And they don't know how to try.
Sorry. I'm bitter. Winterfell in ADwD is my all-time favourite plotline in any fiction.
The moment that best demonstrated the show's decline in nuance imho was right before the BoB when Jon Snow challenged Ramsay to a one-on-one fight and Ramsay was framed as a coward for refusing, when in 1x09 Jaime Lannister challenged Robb to the exact same thing and Robb said "If we do your way Kingslayer, you'd win. We're not doing it your way."
I think it's ridiculous to compare the two. Jamie is an incestuous murderer who tried to kill two of Robb's innocent younger siblings for no reason. Before the war and even during the war Jamie engaged in concentrated bullshit and he even murdered his own cousin to escape captivity. Theres no way in hell Robb would be seen as a coward for not fighting Jamie because 1. Hes the King he needs to consider the lives of his subjects before his honor 😤😤 ignore what happened later 2. Hes a teenager no shit the greatest swordsman alive can kill him but everyone would believe that Jamie will cheat in some way so no takes his offer seriously. On the other hand Ramsey is a weird little rapist thst preferred to fight helpless little girls instead of a man like Jon Snow. Its telling that he murdered a little boy running from him, but he's afraid of fighting someone on equal footing so he's willing to sacrifice thousands to kill Jon instead.
@williamshelton4318 Jon asks Ramsay, "Will your men want to fight for you when they hear you wouldn't fight for them?" and after an awkward pause Ramsay goes "He's good." With Robb it seemed like an indicator of maturity that he's being pragmatic but with Ramsay it's much more surface level doesnt-do-honorable-thing-cuz-coward.
@JohnDoe-vw4zf All that just to find out no one actually gives a fuck what you think
@JohnDoe-vw4zf You do not know how to digest media at all and its embarrassing. None of what you said is what actually happened. You literally made it all up. No one ever even once said Jamie would cheat and it is HILARIOUS you think Jamie would cheat whatsoever when he LITERALLY GETS ANGRY AND KILLS HIS OWN MAN FOR ATTACKING NED FROM BEHIND DURRRRRR!! God you're beyond help. Even when he is emaciated and chained at thd wrist HE DOESN'T CHEAT in a fight. You dislike the most complex character in all of the books; OH WAIT you probably never even fucking READ them did yiu lmfao. Anything over 200 pages probably scares you
@6tiple6ix6afia Are you ok sweetie? I didn't mean to insult your favorite characters.
man GOT is like a wound that will never heal, such a waste.
I know! I usually avoid GOT videos like this because is just too frustrating!
It's sad they never focused more on Roose. Book roose is terrifying and mysterious.
Book Roose is still a moron for elevating his psychotic bastard son to Lord of Winterfell where he will inevitably commit atrocities and turn the north even more against the Bolton’s. Does not make sense for such a calculated man to let his bastard son do what he pleases.
Roose bolt-on
I could listen to show Roose read the phone book. It's sad how many amazing actors were just wasted in this show.
This is it. Exactly my point
This is a clear example how bad the writing got in the later seasons of the show as soon as they didnt have a book to go after.
Yeah sadly the only real writing talent was George. I think GOT really shows why not every fantasy show or novel has this tremendous success. In the end you need really something special and George was able to provide that special something.
The thing is, at the beginning of Reek/Theon and Ramsay storyline they did have a book to go with. That's in Dance, it more shows that D and D without George's help did not actually understand his writing at all. Which is even more worrying if you ask me.
@@bluewizzard8843 I dont think it is fully fair. We did get some decent scenes and dialogues not in the books.
Not saying the latter half of GoT is by any way good, but they did do some decent stuff on their oen as well.
@@MrPozaidonagreed. There’s some great early season scenes that are able to expand on characters and aspects present in the books, but required writing from scratch. D n D seemed to be better at adapting and expanding existing story lines rather then creating those stories themselves
@@ham5097 yeah they had plenty of written material to adapt, they just chose to ignore it because the morons hated any shred of complexity or magic
The biggest problem with Ramsay is that we already had a spoiled brat psycho villain in Joffery. We didn't need another one. The writers clearly didn't know what to do after Joffery dies so they just used Ramsay as a replacement but that was a mistake (one of many they made in the later seasons). We'd already been down that path. The fact that they gave him Sansa, too, made it even worse. It was a total rehash of better seasons.
Yeah, him torturing, breaking, flaying & castrating Theon was enough to show his character. We didn’t need another season of it with Sansa
Yeah, however they still did have a book with a fleshed out character to draw on from, but went with weirdo Joffrey 2.0 instead
@@peterrowan-bx4ci the show was absolutely allergic to having interesting characters or any hint of magic, in a fucking fantasy setting
@@iDeathMaximuMIISansa shouldn't have been in winterfell whatsoever. It made no sense. They just couldn't be arsed hiring different actors
I am SO INTERESTED in the reasons why Joffrey is one of your favourite characters, because there's a lot of stuff I like thinking about in regards to Joff and and the glimpses of his upbringing we get.
Yes same!
Same here.
I don't think we needed more scenes to showcase how twisted and evil Ramsay was, we had plenty of that with Reek. I think something interesting they could've done, was actually in one of my least favorite decisions the show made... his marriage to Sansa. Instead of having her be a victim of yet another terrible husband, maybe they could have had them actually get along...? They hint at this new matured politically savvy Sansa when she comes down the stairs in her Disney villain girlboss dress, maybe they could've actually had her tread this path with a bit of moral ambiguity, maybe she relishes in the power that comes with her marriage to Ramsay, she resents Theon for what she thinks he did to her brothers, and is pleased with his treatment. She has to eventually choose between siding with him and siding with Jon, and betrays Ramsay during the battle of the bastards. Instead of making Ramsay the stand in villain for everyone's converging storyline, maybe she could've had a different and more complicated relationship with him. I was also just so tired of seeing Sansa hurt, it could've paralleled Daenery's story and how she married a stranger, but eventually she took control with Drogo and they were happy for a time. Myranda was interesting, but ultimately a nothing character and that time could've been given to him and Sansa bonding rather than her just being tortured... AGAIN.
Yes! This would have been amazing! So much drama. That's where the show used to excel. Rape as character development is, on top of being problematic if not handled very carefully, just so fucking lazy and boring. It's how every other mediocre action film motivates their male lead. I was very boring for both characters.
Or, this just occurred to me, imagine Ramsay being a physically caring and attentive lover. And even more, imagine him being categorically against rape! Would be a fascinating angle to explore. People are so complex and contradictory. It would have been nice if he had some of that in him. He doesn't need to be sympathetic. But complexity is always good. Joffrey is a good example. He's not in the least bit sympathetic, but he's still complex enough to be very interesting.
@@IshtarNike he was born from rape so him being against it would have been a great character trait if slightly simple
I don't think that exactly work given what the boltons did.
someone missed sansa’s character
@@IshtarNikebook ramsey was a rapist and sexual abuser if I remember correctly (though him being born from rape and him being against it could’ve been an interesting character trait as a gleeful torturer, there were enough willful rapists in the book already), but show Ramsey could’ve gone differently if handled correctly.
Actually, to your point, I wonder if he would still be a rapist, but then for whatever reason on the wedding night DIDNT assault Sansa like she and the audience expected. Maybe his intention would be initially to fuck with her and give her a false sense of security like he did with Theon, but then he ends up sorta fascinated by Sansa’s savviness and cunning. I wouldn’t want an actual romance or an “uwu look he’s just a misunderstood torturer rapist who had this one exception bc Sansa is smart”, but they could have had an incredibly interesting push and pull dangerous game between them, testing each other out. And then Sansa ends up outwitting him and playing him for a fool in the end by betraying him to her brother
Boom you get the morally gray Sansa character arc born out of tense circumstances WITHOUT having her character raped for the drama and weird voyeuristic torture porn.
I know you didn’t use the term probably to avoid this very argument), but Show Ramsey is an evil Gary Stu.
He has no flaws (re: his abilities), he succeeds with seeming lack of effort, and is always 1-3 steps ahead of others.
Tywin and Cersei and even Walter Frey have layers and flaws and are interesting. Ramsey is just The Concept of Evil given arms and legs.
I wouldn't say he know flaws when his dowmfall came about because of his sadistic tendacies. Also no one in the show respects him.
@@fightingmedialounge519 I noted his lack of flaws re: his abilities. Also, his downfall isn’t even from pursuing his sadism. He simply didn’t know about the Vale knights. Otherwise dude would have won.
I consider Shiow Ramsey to be an inferior Palpatine. Palpatine also was just THE BEST at everything but he’s also spent his whole life building up plans slowly that eventually worked (for a couple decades). And his ultimate downfall (in RotJ) indeed was his overconfidence. When your fatal flaw leads to your actual defeat, that’s decent storytelling. Ramsey lost due to bad intel. Maybe he had “a dozen good men” on scouting duty he would have won.
@@TrueYellowDart I mean, his abilities doesn't negate his clear flaws. Except that is his downfall as the knights wouldn't even be there if his cruelty didn't lead to sansa and theon trying to escape. Also even knee they were coming he couldn't have stopped because he lacked the man power to. Even holding up in winterfell wouldn't have worked as seen in the actual events of the show.
That's a pretty short sighted comparison. Tywin if anything is more so the Palpatine of the series where they both find their successes come in large from manipulation and political maneuvering. Where as with show ramsay amongst the several things he's terrible at, he lacks the ability to foster genuine loyalty aside from one person; with all his major alliances coming from the circumstances rather than anything he actually did. He's more Darth maul if anything. Which is what happened to ramsay. Roose called it when he pointed out him acting like a mad dog woul lead to him dying like one. No, he lost because made sure nearly everyone hated him and reasons to see him dead.
@@williamshelton4318 I like Palpatine as a certain type of villain. He’s not particularly compelling because no part of me can identify with his goals or personality, but he’s a fantastic Ultimate Evil Bastard.
Show Ramsey looks like Evil Frodo, book Ramsey looks like Reddit Troll Discord Mod.
I think the difference in the fan reaction to Ramsey compared to Joffrey comes from the fact that Ramsey is kinda in the same league as Littlefinger and Tywin - where their brand of villainy fulfils a power fantasy for some people.
I don't think Joffrey makes it into the same league because he's spoilt and whiney - which leaves him looking somewhat pathetic by comparison.
I think the fact that he's a child also plays into it - I mean, remember the fan reaction to Olly? It doesn't feel like a coincidence to me that two of the most hated characters are young teenagers.
That's my two cents on it, at least.
Just editing to say that I think that there's a couple other factors at play as well. I think the more realistic and grounded a villain is, the more genuine the hate they inspire is. We are far more likely to encounter a spoiled brat whose wealth and authority lets them get away with everything than we are to be subject to the extreme torture Ramsey put Theon through.
I think of it that people have never met someone like Ramsey or Tywin in real life, so they find them entertainingly evil. Like, very few people have met a serial killer or warlord in real life. People have probably met a creep like Littlefinger, but creepy people aren't as entertaining as Littlefinger because he's able pull off manipulating people so well. But people have met spoiled bullies like Joffrey, so they dislike him much more.
People hate Olly because he killed Ygritte who the audience came to love as Jon's love interest. It's the same way people came to hate Bronn for trying to kill Dany's dragons because the audience came to care about them. Like, audience members cared about Ygritte and the dragons more than they did Olly or Bronn. But Olly didn't kill Ygritte just because, Ygritte was a wildling warrior who was fighting against him. She wasn't an a civilian woman or anything. There really that isn't a good reason to hate Olly or Bronn, they're just soldiers on the opposite side of a war.
@williamshelton4318 Yeah, Ramsey is in a weird middle ground, I guess.
I think Ollie was also a very boring character. He felt like he was made to pull at my heartstrings, but nothing more. It was like he wasn't even part of the world where Ramsey very much was. Ollie had no real relationship with anybody but Jon. He was protected by Jon, killed Jon's girlfriend, was forgiven by Jon and then killed Jon. Original show characters never seemed to click with me and I think at least partly that was because they were never nicely woven into the story. After a while even an expanded figure like Bron went there, at least for me.
@RikkaP Yeah, there isn't as much depth to Olly compared to the others. It just doesn't seem like a coincidence to me that the child characters illicit a stronger reaction than the adults.
@@oeurydice I am not so sure about it. I also like to think that my reactions to, say, Arya in book and show differ a lot (and Arya was a child at the beginning and, if memory serves right, was a fan fave from the start). What I will give you any time is that child characters are harder to get into (as readers or writers) as we are adults. We see the world around us quite differently and have different relationships. Still, I do enjoy childrens books (Neverending story has been (and stayed) a favourite of mine since I was 11 or something), but I might be strange there.
They had the character making mistakes in The Game but suffered zero consequences unlike many other characters in the series. D&D used it like a crutch: "Good" characters faced catastrophic consequences and got labeled stupid for one small mistake, usually outside their control, but "bad" characters could act with impunity. For REASONS never revealed. Ramsay had some THICK plot armor. Not for moving the story forward, but for audience shock value. It didn't take long for the character to become stale and exhausting.
Most of good characters in later seasons could make mistakes with zero consequences( see jon).
I tend to think the books criticize evil characters more than good ones. Even "pragmatic" ones like Tywin, Roose, and Littlefinger have flaws that can be exploited. Having a generally evil and malevolent disposition by nature tends to trip you up in ways when you have to coexist with other people in a society. Roose might have betrayed the Starks, but now almost all the lords of the North are working at betraying him and even he knows it. Being this conspicuously evil yet still suffering no consequences is indeed plot armor.
It felt so much like torture pr0n with Ramsay especially in the last seasons.
Also glad to know there's no explicit rape scenes in the book and that makes me feel much better on checking them out.
The book is actually more graphic and disturbing than the show. Book Ramsay makes show Ramsay look tame.
@@louisamay9615 Yes, but it's still implied/mentioned after the fact. There's no real-time, graphic descriptions.
Yeah, don't go into the books expecting there to be nothing. There are still some moments and what happens to Theon is 100% worse, but it's also never gratuitous. Mostly it's implied without needing to show, or there is a reason for it, but I can certainly remember uncomfortable book scenes
Yeah, technically true, but there are some extremely graphic moments. I'm thinking specifically of when Arya overhears Chiswyk.
There's also just... the sheer amount of rape in the books. It feels like every 5 pages, there's something to do with someone being raped. I'm not opposed to depicting the horrors of war at all, but it irks me that it always happens to other, unimportant girls as set dressing to show how dark and edgy the world is. Not that I want any of our POV characters to get raped mind you, but it's a real shame how it's effect is never explored the same way as other violence, like Jaime's dismemberment, Bran's paralysis, and Theon's torture (and of course, Theon's sexual abuse is only implied and never expounded upon). /rant
doesn't it happen to dany?@@j.c.jeggis1818
I was born in a very large town called Bolton and the northern side is dominated by a hill called Winter Hill; winter Hill, winterfell. Idk if maybe JRR Martin saw them on a map or it is just a coincidence, but cool to think about.
@@blaubeer8039it was always clear that Martin is no Tolkien
@@spectre9948He even stole the second 'R'
Fellow northerner here, spent many hours up Rivington hiking on Winter Hill
That is cool AND the real Bolton is full of inbreeds so maybe that’s where he got the Targaryen shit from too
Ramsey had such potential as a character in this story... I don't blame them for not being able to pull it off, though. Ewan Rheon did a tremendous job eitherway!!!
I do blame them. They didn't even try to portray book Ramsay, and he was so much more menacing and interesting.
I'll take a quick stab at why Ramsey wasn't hated in the same way as Cersei and Joffrey, his first target was Theon. Someone we really wanted to see get some kind of revenge put on him. Ramsey did that for us, so even though he's terrible, it started him off on a good spot. Joffrey starts off getting a direwolf killed early on. Cerei is responsible for putting Ned Stark in a bad spot, (yes, Ned being who he is also did that) and Joffrey is the one who ordered him executed. I would bet for most Ned Stark is a fan favorite at that point. He was for me. I read the books first, and he was then too. The Starks in both mediums are portrayed as far more likeable at this point so it's no wonder. Add that with two fantastic actors playing Cersei and Joffrey, it's no wonder they were more hated. Nice to see he's acting again too. Ramsey is also chaotic evil, which is fun, though he got way too predictable later.
I think you're spot on here. It's hard to sympathize with a character you're so angry at. In the books we got to spend time in Theon's head, so we knew more about him. He was more three dimensional. In the show, he doesn't have that same sort of depth, so how can you expect an audience to feel bad for someone they loathe.
@CosmicPhilosopher I'm sure he's a nice guy, he seems that way, but Alfie Allen has a a very punchable quality as Theon. Even before the betrayal.
Yeah, you're correct. Theon betrayed the Starks and got a lot of innocent people killed including the two farmer boys and that Maester. It's debatable whether he deserved the punishment he got but, in my opinion, he did deserve it so I thought it was funny when Ramsey was eating the sausage. Ramsey does overstay his welcome, though, and I got pretty sick of him by the end. It was clear that the writers just used him as a replacement for Joffrey but we'd already seen one spoiled brat psycho. We didn't need another.
Yeah that's definitely a reason, which I find sad because I very much empathise with Theon... although he does do something bad towards the main characters and, even early on, the show was more interested in punching down on him as someone pompous and pathetic for humour, rather than someone troubled and insecure
@@CosmicPhilosopher Wow, I totally disagree. Theon was the one character I found much more three dimensional in the show, and you feel like he was truly caught between a rock and a hard place. I watched S2 as I read ACOK and I thought Theon's storyline was done way better in the show. He actually has conflicting feelings about his two families. There's actual drama stemming from the fact that he was raised in Winterfell.
In the books (I just finished ACOK so it's fresh), he's the same generically nasty, entitled highborn that we've seen 100 times already. He's planning to betray the Starks from the moment he leaves for Pyke, he's even more entitled, he has 0 affection for the people of Winterfell, he rapes Kyra "until she was bruised and sobbing" because he's stressed over a nightmare, he threatens to have his men gang rape Palla (again) if Farlen doesn't help him, he agrees to let Reek rape Palla if he can get the Boltons to help, and he prepares a noose to hang a child to stop Rodrick from taking the castle back. He doesn't have a single redeeming quality, and he's not even particularly conflicted about it. Idk, I didn't even love to hate him, I just found him boring and insufferable.
They ruined his character by not introducing him in season 2, Ramsay commits horrible atrocities in book 2 and then blames it all on oltheon and then tortues theon for the crimes he didn't commit. Ramsays torture is partially sadistic but also partially so theon would never tell anyone the truth; bran and rickon are alive, ramsay killed ser rodrick, ramsay burned winterfell.
Ramsey is heartless and sadistic. I didn’t find him funny or charismatic at all. The things he did were horrifying.
I don’t know why but there is a group of people who like it when men get there junk cut off and I’ve found them in Twitter threads so people may like him more for that as well and then say he was funny or something
I'm kind of a hater of philandering men like Theon so I found it funny Theon's junk was cut off but Ramsay himself wasn't funny only his treatment of Theon but not of the others that's actually sickening
It's not even a satisfying kind of horror.
I genuinely am curious what demographic of people it is that send death threats to actors and actresses who play Characters they hate. They did it to the actress who played Skyler white in breaking bad so much that she pretty much avoids the spotlight with the breaking bad fandom .I'm starting to wonder if maybe it's just a large number of people who are literally mentally ill and don't know better. How does a person not understand that an actor isn't the character they play? I can only assume it's people who are not right in the head because no mentally stable person could make that mistake.
is ignorance a sickness?
11 year olds, probably. A lot of ignorant/cruel/stupid behaviour online turns out to be children acting like children.
Yeah show Ramsey is what is called a Villain Sue
It really resonated with me when you listed all of Joffrey's different character dynamics. Joff really is a diverse character, and Ramsay is barely a character at all.
I never understood the perception of Joffrey vs Ramsay, I always enjoyed hating Joffrey but with Ramsay I just wanted him gone. Everyone else seemed to always feel the opposite way for some reason. Joffrey was just a little shithead with too much power while Ramsay was a sadistic sociopath. I found the former much more entertaining and compelling while the latter was just torture porn most of the time
Probably because ramsay was potrayed as more competent.
Id say the overall plot writing is what damaged Ramsay's character more than Ramsay's character being poorly written. He stayed consistent throughout the entire show, you said that was him being one note but I don't think that's a bad thing. They did make him way more powerful and smart then he should have been. But overall it was the lack of consequences he faced from his actions but that is the plot writing not his character.
It's like what happened to Cerci in season 8. Meaning that he made no real wrong decisions that caused his downfall and he just got nuked by an entire army sneaking up on him from behind. (How the knights of the Aryn managed to occupy mot calin with no one knowing ill never now).
So his character wasn't bad or ruined. The writing of the plot was just poor.
@@williamshelton4318 I mean, him both killing his dad walda immediately shows that he can make pretty poor decisions.
@@williamshelton4318 not really. He gained nothing from killing walda, and killing his dad took away a valuable strategist from his side who could have maybe convinced the other house to help. I guess it made him warden of the north, for a week.
I think after Theon's junk was cut off I stopped caring about the torture scenes. They became too repetitive and not particularly interesting. I did feel initially that Theon needed to be punished seriously for burning children, but in my eyes he has been punished enough after getting thoroughly broken down.
I found that the Ramsay-torturing-Theon storyline valuable in that it helped me improve my empathy skills. I feel like it really helped me understand, emotionally, why abuse victims might not leave their abuser. I knew, intellectually, that the abuser was at fault, not the victim, and that asking why the victim doesn't just leave was victim-blaming, but internally, I didn't get it and would feel really frustrated. This helped me get it, I think. I know most cases are nowhere this extreme or severe, but seeing something this extreme first I was able to see it and can apply the knowledge to other, less extreme examples, while something more subtle would have likely gone over my head.
Kinda goes to show you can get something positive out of art, even if the art in question is messy, bad, gratuitous, or poorly executed. Glad it taught you something!
That is actually and very true and its sad how most people didnt understand this at all and used to hate theon even more for staying with ramsay….
I think the show made me feel bad for Theon, even after everything he did at Winterfell, but then they just kept going… and going… and going… and going…
The “20 good men” scene was so egregious. Just D&D ruining another character in Stannis for the purpose of making Ramsey seem OP, when he’s not.
Oh god, and Little Finger not knowing ANYTHING about Ramsey… 🤦♂️
So bad
Littlefinger has spies in brothels and in the Red Keep but oversimplifying fools want him to have known everything everywhere.
The world anvil ad will never stop being funny
Ramsay had a huge amount of plot armor because the show writers liked him a lot for some reason, he deformed the north's story to a degree where it left it unrecognizable from the books and ruined it. Only when he faced the even bigger plot armor of Jon he was defeated but everything about his character is the bad writing that is also in the last seasons in some cases even worst but people for some reason refuse to accept it.
While tactically gifted,militarily speaking,he was quite wastefull during the battle of the bastards. I've played enough total war to know you don't send ALL your cav in first and then procede to decimate them with friendly arrow fire,then not hold back at least a few units of infantry as reserve...
I only watched GoT in 2023 after getting ill and finally making time to binge watch the whole thing. Since then I have massively enjoyed several content makers exploring so many different angles of the characters from the show, and i’ve learned more about the books which i’ve not read. I don’t know if/when i’ll ever get tired of these videos, but for now I really enjoy them. Looking forward to you sharing why Joffrey is one of your favourite characters at some point soon, I hope!
People laughed at the sausage thing? I just made me feel more ick and i tend to skip those sequences on rewatches.
Berserk has a similar segment in the manga and 97 anime, where a character is broken down by torture. I think they handle it better with one scene that's takes place after the character has been down there for awhile. The torturer taunts him and you get some impmications of whats been done. You get the characters thoughts where you see his sanity slipping. You get what the character thinks is a hallucination. Then its over. It is maybe half the length of one of these Ramsey scenes but accompmishes everything it does.
I’ve found that girls laugh at it and guys don’t for the most part
Lots of people out there who don’t feel empathy towards others way more than you would think mainly because they learn to hide it and fake it to fit in and they are the ones who mistake empathy for being soft
13:35 Little Finger SAID that he didn't know anything about Ramsey. I see that as absolutely consistent with Little Finger's character, in that he knew a lot about Ramsey and so he knew that telling Ramsey that he didn't know about him would cause Ramsey to try everything to prove himself and his infamy to Petr, and in doing so lose sight of the important bigger picture.
The real tragedy of the writing is how D&D then just discarded this potentially-great setup in their determination to hurry towards the end of the show. SMH.
Littlefinger knowing about Ramsey would have made his decision to give him Sansa even less sensible than it already was.
I appreciate your putting into words something I couldn't quite put my finger on, while watching. I think the best scene to encapsulate this feeling for me was, ironically, as Jon Snow has Ramsay on the ground, beating the ever-living crap outta him. All I could think, with every cutaway, especially when Jon looks over to Sansa watching: "Don't turn your back on this bastard!" Clearly beaten. And yet my mind is still playing tricks on me, expecting something somehow to frustrate justice.
A good showrunner teaches you how to watch their show, like a good writer teaches you how to read. They train you to understand the rules they're playing by. Subtly, sometimes even undetectably. D&D, in the end, had me even doubting the obvious. (And connectedly, it's also how they lost much of their audience in the end. By breaking the rules they'd taught their audience to play by...)
G.o.t had an odd way of not dwelling on serious injuries that need medical attention that wasn't too hand.
Both Theon and Jamie's removed body parts would need work to stop the wound from losing blood and killing them.
The books go into decent detail about Jaime becoming super feverish and weak from his hand and having to have qyburn treat him with maggots to eat the dead infected flesh, cleaning it with boiled wine, etc. Every thing that happened to theon happened in the past because he disappears entirely after book 2 until book 5 where he's down to 7 fingers, missing toes, half a mouthful of broken teeth, and potentially losing his manhood(I don't think it's ever explicitly stated that he was gelded by Ramsey but there's dialogue that implies it)
@@jublington fair enough that all sounds reasonable. For me it's more that Jamie has an open artery that has about 5 mins to be... We knotted or stitched, before he's dead.
@@bogstandardash3751 obvs ur gonna have to suspend disbelief a bit it is fiction after all. I don't remember if they cauterize it or not, but honestly idk enough about anatomy to know if that would even help at all. He was already malnourished and then they have days to march before they get to harrenhal where qyburn is so obviously that would probably kill any man in real life.
I love that idea you brought up about how everyone wants to kill him for the same "you traumatized someone" reasons. That's pretty dang boring and I've never thought about it. Like if this was just some single 90 minute fantasy movie, that'd be fine but it gets so dragged out with nothing changing until he dies.
great video!
I think the real Reek may have abused Ramsey as a child, with Ramsey forming some stolkholms syndrome in relation to Reek.
Ramsey was prepared, willing and able to cast Reek aside for his own well being.
Then Ramsey goes on to twist a broken man into a hollow recreation of his abuser, in a Reverse of what the twos relationship may have been like.
Instead of His Reek as we see in Theon.
He may be been 'His Ramsey' to the real Reek.
Wasn't the first scene him hunting Reek?
This would make sense as in the book it's described that Ramsay's violent tendencies got worse once he had reek
In many ways its part of the epidemic of being able to show close to everything you want. The beauty of book and audio is you can hide and reveal easier. In many ways people are desensitised enough to have to see every scene in order to know it happened, where it is often more disturbing to allow a person to imagine what you dont see. There is a famous scene in Flash Gordon where Ming tells his allows his daughter to be tortured with something we never see but we hear the screams after she begs as if its the worse possible thing. I think GOT got to a level where they got away with so many things they were just doing to see how far they could go.
It's just lazy, really. They could have used more nuance, but you're right in that it seems D&D were thinking, "HBO lets us get away with anything! Let's do it!" See also: Littlefinger directing two women to have sex while he spouts exposition.
Sansas R scene taints her already overly degraded character and it's too much, she never really gains her power back and she also never gets enough fondness about her where she gains a base rallying for her Win...i always felt funny ab which way she was gonna go..ask far as making her ever side with that monster Ramsy would be unforgiving in an character that was already on ice as far as liability, depth or rewarding qualities
I think characters in GOT were seriously misunderstood by the directors and when Martain stepped back it shows. I think the characters are more like peices in chess or probably Shogi as they come back from the dead. Ramsey and a number of other characters are like the knight which essentially really messes up the game, by doing something unpredictable. Martin like a number of writers almost let their characters loose on the world and get surprised at what happens. Taking Theon creates a number of consequences which is a large part of his importance so building the extra stuff on detracts from the interesting stuff.
Finally someone talks about this. I want my Ramsay to be a big fat ugly brute, god dammit. Not someone who gets SHIRTLESS SCENES
Ramsey in the show was absolutely and totally a self insert character, someone(s) with the authority to influence the plot this much were enjoying everything about him. Same as John in the end I guess. Pulling back from the details and looking at the broad plot strokes the decisions are so poor. At the end of the show I was left feeling like there were decent writers trying to make increasingly short story notes with in the show.
Normally a self insert character isn't born of rape.
My biggest disappointment when it comes to the show is how they mishandled ramsey. Despite the batshit endings everyone got i can still read the books and see how we get there. Ramseys show version ruins what little story he provides in the books and destroys sansa's story too. If they'd just been patient and listened fo grrm and maybe idk made any attempt to establish a storyline in dorne just imagine what this show couldve been
I wholeheartedly agree with the video and I thank you for summing it all up so well. The only thing I'd add is that there is one instance of the- uhm *practical application of Reek* and that is when Ramsay sends him to convince the Ironborn in Moat Calin to surrender. But yeah that's also not really presented as a high stakes thing for Ramsay.
Ramsey's death was anticlimactic. That was the worst part of his storyline imo.
There's a pretty funny metal song about 20 Good Men on RUclips and it riffs on the Ramsay invincibility by implying that the 20 good Men Ramsay brought were sheer badasses like Kratos, Aragorn, Chuck Norris etc in order to pull off that plot-defying stunt with Stannis lol
Wonderful video. There are actually 3 Reeks in the books. Ramsay pretends to be Reek while Theon holds Winterfell. I love those chapters.
You should do an analysis of Jon Connington
I always thought Ramsay tortured Theon into Reek because Ramsay was envious of Theon fur being a prince and heir to one of the seven kingdoms, while he was a bastard. He took a prince and made him a bastard’s slave.
I'll die on this hill, but the Battle of the Bastards was silly. Didn't enjoy it at all, and at the end, Ramsay's last fight was laughable.
Why didn't he shoot Jon when his back was turned, instead of the giant? Made no sense. Is he stupid? It's not for an honorable fight; Ramsay doesn't have any honor.
And Jon should've stayed dead. They just kind of yanked him around and made him stupid after they ran out of stuff for him to do
Oh it was definitely silly. I admittedly enjoyed it on first viewing but even then I knew it was a complete mess. Well filmed but terribly written
My theory behind the immense love for Ramsay’s character in the show is the fact that Iwan Rheon is attractive. Show Ramsay is like you said attractive, slightly comedic, and was sociopathic enough that he knows how to be charismatic. Book Ramsay isn’t handsome or charismatic. Lena Heady is a beautiful woman but there were no redeeming qualities in Cersei (except the love of her children. That and her cheek bones). Jack Gleeson got the Tom Felton treatment. That being said as well as Draco was portrayed, he doesn’t hold a candle to Joffrey Lannister, oh I mean Baratheon. There were no redeeming qualities for Joffrey, Cersei at least used to excuse that she did it to protect her legacy and children. Joffrey just enjoying torturing people just for the thrill. If Ramsay’s character design followed the book, Iwan would also be getting the Draco treatment.
That part "focus" was really well put. I hadn't realised it but you're absolutely correct. Fascinating problem of their own creation.
Huh I never actually read the scene with the candle as Ramsay waiting in the broken tower, I thought Theon just immediately chickened out and took the candle to Ramsay's chambers
I really liked Ramsey for the first two seasons we met him in. Basically right up until season 5 when he got suddenly absurdly powerful for no reason, i thought his character was great-and not despite the gratitous torture of Theon in those seasons either, i think that worked, but only because theyre both fictional characters. If i met a Ramsey in real life, I'd absolutely run screaming lmao
If you would ever like to read a book that gives a similar amount of discomfort as Ramsay's scenes, I suggest the book of human skin by Michelle lovric. It makes the air feel heavy and your stomach turn (and is occasionally boring I will admit) but I had to finish it. It's been over a decade since I read it so perhaps it's not as bad as I remember but ive never forgotten how it made me feel.
TheDragonDemands I think his name is did a great video on the Battle of the Bastards and how it could have fixed everything. The Castarks and the Umbers should have turned on him as a consequence of Ramsays relentless brutality intact the seeds were being planted for this to potentially happen. Problem is DND likely felt this would have resulted in a less epic battle so they pansied out and went for a much more Hollywood direction. It literally makes no sense that some of them would literally fight to the death for Ramsay after all the pain and suffering he has caused their houses.
Book Ramsey quite frankly terrified me at points. Hate to admit it but TV show Ramsey got the occasional chuckle out of me from his completely over the top attitude at times
fantastic points. you hit the nail on the head of why ppl seemed more drawn to house bolton in the show than books. also ramsay being incredibly handsome in the show probably help in this case too 😂
Iwan Rheon is like a handsome shark
Yes and it was bad to cast him he's way too handsome to play Ramsay and it made his character read differently he was a brute akin to a highschool jock who molests schoolgirls while Iwan's portrayel made him appear like a twisted gentleman akin to Alex DeLarge from a Clockwork Orange
Love your thoughts on GOT. Will you ever do a theon deep dive? 🙏
Most likely yes, he's one of my favourite characters
Love Ramsay, only reason I watched after season 4… Sansa I hate.
Ramsey killing Roose was the last straw. D&D were just awful and created a shitshow.
I wouldn't be surprised if Littlefinger's comment was meant to plant a seed encouraging Ramsey to be "louder" with his actions. Destabilize his neighbors further.
Ramsay made my life hurt, I’m literally rewatching the whole show now for the second time as I didn’t watch GOT until HOD came out and I can’t wait to get to his death lol😂 bro was evil on a total different level.
I respect your opinions but I disagree mostly show reek/ramsey scenes were fine its meant to be a dark show. But main point I wanna make is book Ramsey is very politically and tactically smart. He kidnaps and marys Lady Hornewood potentially going from a bastard into a lord. When that scheme fails and sir Rod attacks he swaps places with reek disguising himself. He convinces Theon to not only burn the bodys of the butcher kids which makes people think Rob is the last living male stark, but he ingratiates with Theon so much that hes allowed to leave Winterfell, he then proceeds to come back and destroys sir Rods army despite being outnumbered 5:1, tricks Theon into opening the gates yielding Winterfell to Ramsey, and then he gets Moat Calin to surrender without a man lost.
Also side note, the scene in the show where Theon carries the candle, he goes directly to Ramseys room, Ramsey isn't just waiting there at the tower like an omnipotent creature XD
Book Ramsay is tactically smart but not politically, in my opinion. He's great at cunning trickery to get something he wants, but not so good at the bigger picture and the long term, partly due to his impulsive side. That said, I did kinda make a similar argument in my character analysis video of him, he's nowhere near as stupid as people say he is in the books. He's actually quite smart, just also short sighted and unrestra
Ramsay is the same type of character as Cersei though, a villain sue power fantasy who slowly went from an actual character into an awful excuse for a plot device who was unkillable because the writers needed him around to put asses on couches.
Retitle this video to “autist tries desperately to figure out basic concepts like ‘humor’.
I dunno, all I'm saying is "I can perfectly see why people find this funny. I don't personally but I've got no problem with that directly", not sure how that translates to desperately trying to understand humour
5:58 that’s what makes TV RamJam better. He has WAY more personality in the show than in the book. If D&D had been faithful to book Ramsay, he’d be dull AF!
idk I think he was fine is as he was, basically the Joker in the North. I liked that he was this mysterious villain who kinda came out of nowhere, he was a charismatic villain at a time when the show was lacking one. Not every villain needs a complicated backstory and it's not like Ramsay was ever a very nuanced character in the books.
I love your breakdown of Ramsey Bolton as well as all the other ASOIAF characters! ❤❤❤
Gonna watch this later but I needed to say my piece first
The casting of Iwan Rheon has utterly ruined Ramsay. I really thing he's a fantastic actor but he's way too hot and has too much charisma, unlike the gross and disturbing book Ramsay
Now, I can't read the books without picturing the actor as Ramsay and let me tell you, the experience is deeply confusing because, as much as I find everything that Ramsay does terrible, there's a tiny part of me that keeps thinking "yes daddy, tie me up and flay me alive"
Well I argued he was too compelling for his own good, too attractive is another angle 😂
You need help lmao 😂
I wish the show had been made by people who had an actual interest in the well thought out backgrounds of the characters, GRRM is interested in where people come from, how they became who they are. Joffrey is absolutely a child raised by a disinterested father and a narcissist mother, he wasn't going to get out of this as a kind, empathetic person and what they saw was a brat that deserves to be slapped for comedic effect, nothing more complex there. I feel strongly about him because I was raised by a narcissist and I'm grateful now that I wasn't the favourite child, I see what it did to my sister. I think they were attracted to Ramsay because he is so easy to turn into a one note villain, that's something they understand, he's much more extreme than the more grey, nuanced characters even though when you look closer there is more nuance (as your last video on him demonstrated so well).
I wouldn't go that far considering they acknowledge the complexity in characters like theon. Also the books to suggest joffrey was just a bad person form the start.
It was all just too expected for me. Like an evil for the sake of evil son of the New Warden of the North. You know exactly where that is going. Being part of a weird narrative trip to repeatedly rape Sansa to help "develop" her character. Not hard to surmise that either Theon or Sansa would kill him because at this point in the series, main characters had plot armor so nothing bad is going to happen to Sansa or Jon or Theon in the long run. He kind of felt like a filler villain with an obvious story arc, just to occupy time until the final bosses (Wight Walkers, Cersei, Dany) get their final setup. There is not a whole lot to pull from the books other than his malignant nature and hints of betraying his father. In that way he gave the show writers more freedom to play around with his character and he basically became a sadistic troll and felt one note to me.
In the books their is a sort of cunning to him behind his wild and cruel nature. You see it in the way he wormed his way into Theon's ear and helped take out the Iron islanders from within. The show riffs off of this in his introduction but then you never see any more of that through the rest of his time on the show. Idk he seemed like he was there to meet the show's depravity quota and nothing more than that.
Kinda shocking to hear you say he was praised online. I actually hated every one of his scenes, so much so that I have to skip through most of them. You do make an interesting point that the very first time I watched the beginning of the torture it was ‘shocking’ in a compelling way. But like you say immediately afterwards, it becomes just unnecessary after one time, especially considering his relatively small stature in significance. You’re right, in the end, I think his character actually did the show detrimentally. He’s a good actor though, I’ll admit. Even as a character he’s entertaining. But for me, it was way too much. I much prefer watching the villainry of Cersei because she feels real. I don’t like her character but the show doesn’t tell me not to. She does so because decisions she makes. Whereas with Ramsay, I feel like I’m being screamed at. It reminds me of the fictional nature of the show, which imo is not good.
I didn’t know people liked show Ramsay. I hate him as much as Geoffrey lol. I can think Theon is a POS while also recognizing Ramsay is even worse.
Walder was a villain but the Freys stay put in the Riverlands with the Lannisters and thus second fiddle.
At least they showed Theon flipping out over the horn (vuvuzela) treatment.
TV Ramsey as in the books setup the killing of the men Roose put on him to spy on him.
Book Ramsey was a big villain, starving Lady Hornwood to death after she ate her fingers was particuarly cruel.
Joffrey was inept, incapable and weak. His position, cruelty and family were his only attributes.
The 20 Good Men scene makes sense if you assume he just negotiated with Stannis' mercenaries - abandon his cause, fire his supplies, and you won't have to freeze to death trying to lay siege to Winterfell.
That's what I was expecting, displaying the fickleness or mercenaries when things go badly.
Later Game of Thrones seems allergic to politics and consequences.
In the book, after having spent close to two years getting everything a person can do on another done on him by Ramsey, Theon, even in his Reek state, looks at Roose and realizes that "he has more cruelty in his little finger than Ramsay has in his whole body". The real antagonist in the North was never Ramsay. It was always Roose. Ramsay is the wild card, which will, probably, bring his father down before going ballistic and causing a burst of horror, but it's gonna be just that - a burst. His own brand of villainy is simply unsustainable in the long run in the circumstances Westeros is in right now. Ramsay is simply a character who has a headstart due to his amorality and sadism, but helplessly leans more and more into it, until it becomes a detriment. The only way he surpasses his father is that he's the literal incarnation of Roose's hybris. The fact that they chose to leave Roose in the background and focused on Ramsay's theatrics is just pure sensationalism over competency and understanding of the characters. I'm pretty sure Iwan Rheon is a great enough actor that he could have pulled off book! Ramsay satisfactorily as well, but they'd have to significantly reduce his presence for his character to be effective. Michael McElhatton too, they wasted in the end, which is a damn pity, because he was pulling off a great Roose which is no easy feat. Downgrading the father-son relationship was truly a missed opportunity. Imagine if they'd done that with Tywin-Tyrion.
The words I now use to describe the downfall of GoT is that they fetishized violence. Their dedication to, and dependence on, Ramsay was the most obvious and maybe even the catalyst. Normalizing and validating Ramsay through comedy and charisma communicated a certain lack of character value and encouraged audience members to accept and even identify with that lack of value. And it went on and on, right up to his final scene.
They took his popularity as a cue to double down on senseless violence over purposeful and narrative violence, and you can see the uptick in blood and brutality after season 4, when they started giving Ramsay more scenes.
Just found these videos the other day and love the analysis. As far as why I like Ramsay as a villain more than Joffrey, personally, it's that he does all his own dirty work and lacks the cowardice Joffrey sometimes displays. It makes him more.. respectable, in a way? Though that sounds weird to say about a character so unapologetically malicious.
We shoulda known from the beginning Dumb & Dumber were not fit to make this show.
They got rid of half the Magical & Cool stuff from the books and only made it thru seasons 1 & 4 cuz the books were actually finished.
But they truly didn't know wyd they were doing.
I didn’t know people liked show Ramsay. I hate him as much as Geoffrey lpl
But I think the idea that people liked Ramsey and laughed at Theon speaks more about the audience than it fires to be Ramsey. I was but one of those people that saw Theon the way Ramsey did. He thought he was vile, maybe occasionally humorous, but mostly vile and couldn’t wait for him to get his comeuppance. When my roommate watched it for the first time I told her, you’ll hate Joffrey, but Joffrey’s got nothing on Ramsey.
I don't think you missed anything. D&D butchered "Game of Thrones" after George R.R. Martin left.
The desecration of Theon balanced the immoral decision he made earlier in the series. We slowly see how he turns his back on the Starks with each act, one goofy and/or fatal act after another. Likewise, the many exploitations shown on screen show how further down those decisions led him. I do get your point overall, if all you're doing is examining scenes of one character and only with that pov in mind.
Show Ramsey makes those scenes very boring on rewatch. The substitution of Myranda for the Bastard's Boys was boring, too.
when theon was not saved, thats when the show started going to shit. if you show someone that 100% should get out of there but that cant because plot...............
ramsay was the poor mans joffrey. he stopped being interesting once Theon fully became Reek.after that he was just some unstoppable flat obstacle for Sansa to reclaim winterfell and the satisfaction of that is completely taken away from her because Jon ends up taking all the credit.
Ramsey is so hot
I enjoy so much your videos! And your point of view is very interesting and insightful to me! Thanks for doing these video ;)
Ramsay is basically a villain Mary sue
Tbf, GRRM deserves some of the blame in this case because he did write the castration scene and episode. Minor nitpick.
Great video. Reminds me very much of Arya. They knew she was a fan favourite so she became this unbeatable avenger who effortlessly killed a bunch of foes.
18:37 this is the same mistake The Walking Dead did with Negan (amongst many other mistakes as well of course).
I think the show made Ramsey politically astute and tactical in an attempt to keep him from being completely one dimensional.
Wasn't he taking it out on theon because while he was a bastard and not counted as an heir yet when he was turning Theon into reek; wasn't it a jealous sadism that theon was treated as a noble son even though he was a traitor to the north?
It was stupid having sansa kill him because he sa her and not reek after everything he did
Imo, I felt Ramsey was there to explore Theon and Sansa's stories.