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Why do people mention Joffrey more than Ramsay Bolton when it comes to villain references? Who did you personally came to hate more? (Game of Thrones)

Who were you more disgusted with?

  • Joffrey

    Votes: 266 59.9%

  • Ramsay

    Votes: 178 40.1%
  • Total voters
    444
The Albatross

The Albatross

Member
Oct 25, 2017
38,958
Ramsay was like a cartoonish supervillain. He's also a much less important character and totally one sided, not even any attempt to present him as anything other than sadistic and twisted.

Joffrey was a fucking king so he gets more attention. Ramsay was irredeemable, no hope, nobody to help steer him in the right direction, utterly lost. Joffrey had people around him who could influence him to do the right thing but he ignored them and schemes against them.
 
Era Uma Vez

Era Uma Vez

Member
Feb 5, 2020
3,204
John Doe said:
Joffrey is a coward but I think he manages to hold his own in a sparring match against Robb early on.
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I haven't read the books in years (i read half of the first one, many years ago). Does he spar with Robb in the books?
On TV, he never interacted with Robb, iirc.
Which, btw, is what makes the first seasons of GoT an incredible show/story, the way that some main characters never get to interact and you still feel the weight they have, not only in the show, but on each others stories.
 

Deleted member 31817

Nov 7, 2017
30,876
Ramsay was a poorly written deus ex machina fuckup in the show.
 
Geode

Geode

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,455
I fucking hate Ramsey. I stopped watching GoT a little bit after he was introduced. I couldn't stand him whenever he was on the screen.
 
Hollywood Duo

Hollywood Duo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
41,781
Ramsay was terrible because he's some dumb invincible guy with plot armor for so long then he just gets wrecked. Joffrey followed a natural conclusion. He was a massive dick and was taken out in short order.
 
Lunar Wolf

Lunar Wolf

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
somerandomweirdguy said:
There's serial killer, and then there's going into battle shirtless and being completely fine (in a show that previously attempted some amount of realism), and then sneaking into a sprawling camp with "Twenty good men" and somehow lighting the entire supply train on fire, and then killing his own father and getting literally zero pushback from any of his father's lords or retainers (when kinslaying is one of the most grievous crimes, and why the fuck would you trust someone who just did that).

Bannermen wouldn't suffer Ramsay to be their lord. That was the entire point of Mad King Aerys being overthrown.
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I meant like Ramsay exist in personality. I'm not talking feats.
 
Terra Firma

Terra Firma

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,235
You're more likely to come across a Joffrey in real life than a Ramsay. Joffrey was more believable because of it whereas Ramsay was over the top, cartoonishly evil.
 
Lunar Wolf

Lunar Wolf

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
John Doe said:
Joffrey is a coward but I think he manages to hold his own in a sparring match against Robb early on.

Who knows if Robb was going easy on him. Then he did whimper like a baby when Arya whacked him with a stick. He's cowardly but he also isn't completely useless when it comes to handling himself.
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Era Uma Vez said:
I haven't read the books in years (i read half of the first one, many years ago). Does he spar with Robb in the books?
On TV, he never interacted with Robb, iirc.
Which, btw, is what makes the first seasons of GoT an incredible show/story, the way that some main characters never get to interact and you still feel the weight they have, not only in the show, but on each others stories.
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Yes, Robb and Joffrey spar with wooden swords in the books.

Robb wasn't crushing Joffrey but Robb was beating him.

Joffrey was also 12 versus Robb's 14 but Joffrey was taller than Robb (and Jon) in the books regardless. It's not that Joffrey was unskilled or weak, it's just that he was cowardly.
 
Digital Dinosaur

Digital Dinosaur

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,028
Rita Repulsa's Moon Palace
Ramsay, for lack of a better way of putting it, was not surprising. He was more or less the expected vicious bastard for his context and background.

Joffrey got under people's skin a lot more because, in hindsight, he was a rather Trump-like situation: an impossibly stupid, cruel, sadistic cretin who was protected, excused, and justified by the political people around him. In every Ramsay episode, the viewer thought "yeah sure, this is to be expected." But Joffrey episodes made people scream "he can't keep getting away with this!"
 
Siggy-P

Siggy-P

Avenger
Mar 18, 2018
11,865
Ramsey was just an edge lord and had no depth.

Jeffrey was sadistic but had his own personal limits and reasons for doing what he did. The show showed you in depth why he's as bad as he is and what's pushing him to do the cruel things he does. And also why people follow him. There's also moments throughout all his evil that you actual some depth of humanity starting to push it's way forward.

Also as a narrative point he served as the central focus of the entire story. Near enough every plot line was related to him in some way and when he died was in my opinion when the show took a nose dive and the plot basically dissapeared for multiple seasons.
 
Azzanadra

Azzanadra

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,804
Canada
Psychoward said:
Ramsay was a poorly written deus ex machina fuckup in the show.
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Yeah pretty much. Joffery was much better written. One of the things that helped was that Joffery actually faced repercussions for his actions such as the ways in which Tyrion and Tywin belittled him and how characters acknowledges his incompetence. Ramsay on the other hand is somehow more evil and viscous than any other characters yet also a better tactician than Stannis, commands more loyalty than the Starks, is a better general than Jon, and somehow never faces the consequences for his recklessness. He could kill his father and his Frey wife, and somehow everybody is okay with it. He can openly torture and kill Rickon Stark, and nobody utters a world. Despite never obtaining formal combat training, he can defeat the best of the ironborn, shirtless.

Its just comical how good he is at everything, and how the show basically bends over backwards to give him wins over other characters.
 
Lonestar

Lonestar

Roll Tahd, Pawl
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
3,556
AstronaughtE said:
Yeah, I think that's it for me as well. Although, I can't say why I feel the fact that Ramsay is willing to get his hands dirty is more "admirable" than finding others to carry out their evil.
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It's not so much as "more admirable" but that he at least put skin in the game, between Yara's rescue attempt, 12 Good Men and the final at Winterfeld, he could have just gotten killed or maimed. Joffrey would more or less be able to sit back in a castle with thousands of people defending himself or attacking people, whatever he wanted. The only way to get to him was pretty much what happened to him. That or wait till Season 8 Dany shows up.
 
HotHamBoy

HotHamBoy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
16,423
I only know the characters through the show but Joffrey is a much more complex and compelling character.

Nothing about Ramsay's comeuppance was ever near as satisfying as just Tyrion slapping Joffrey in the face.
Mirage said:
and then there was Euron.
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God, you can follow the decline of the show just through the Big Bads. Each more cartoonish than the last.
 
nampad

nampad

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,238
Cutting off another man's cock clearly makes Ramsay worse.

Ramsay is also way more sadistic, he wants to break and own people. The flailing torture is just disgusting.

Joffrey felt more like a spoiled brat shithead and not as psychotic as Ramsay.
Also basing this on the books.
 
Koukalaka

Koukalaka

Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,283
Scotland
Ramsey is a cartoon character with terrible writing and inexplicable plot armour.

Joffrey is a spoiled brat with terrible parenting suddenly being given unlimited power.
 
Dellow Felegate

Dellow Felegate

Member
Oct 27, 2017
445
Joffrey was the better villain. Ramsay just felt like the writers were using him as a way to play out whatever shocking thing they could think of.
 
Sasliquid

Sasliquid

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,294
By the time Ramsey rolls around it just becomes desensitising. Joffreys violence felt more shocking, Ramsey's was more expected.

I like Ramsey more in the books than the show though. He's not made out to be some genius villain there.
 
Duffking

Duffking

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,695
Ramsay's a boring charicature with no actual character beyond being a sadist who wants power. He's also an example of D&D really not getting what people liked about GoT's shocks. D&D read "bad things happen to people who make bad decisions" and understood it as "bad things must happen to the charcacters the audience is rooting for", and thus Ramsay is just this boring God mode character right up until he gets basically Deus Ex Machina'd out of the story.

What's that Ramsay? You're cornered in a dungeon, wearing no armour facing down several ironborn, one of whom has demonstrated her proficiency just seconds early at throwing axes at people from long range? No worries, you win anyway!
 
Coyote Starrk

Coyote Starrk

The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
52,914
Joffery was a character that you just loved to hate. I was honestly sad to see him go.


Ramsay you just hated. I couldn't wait for that fucker to die.
 
VaporSnake

VaporSnake

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,603
Joffrey felt like a historically realistic type of villain, you might have a great/decent king and then the entire weight of the world is placed upon the shoulders of the worst type of petulant child. Ramsay as others have said, felt like a cartoon villain in comparison. Sure he had some realistic motives in killing other heirs and his own father to secure power, that certainly occurred in reality but the depiction just came across as HBO's version of the DBZ villain escalation problem, they needed a new Joffrey, but he had to be more unhinged, more unlikable, more sadistic and just came across as a cardboard cutout of a character.
 
crimsonECHIDNA

crimsonECHIDNA

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,339
Florida
I feel like there was actual give and take with Joffrey when it came to his character. He was a literal impetuant child because he was desperately trying to flex his power while being a blatant puppet king. There's an actual tragedy to his character where your left thinking that maybe he wouldn't have turned out to be such a horrible monster if he had the right foundation in his life.

Ramsay fucking sucked. He had none of the nuance of Joffrey and on top of that was given a ridiculous amount of plot armor. It was like he was specifically written with the final boss fight in mind (Battle of the Bastards), with no care for anything else. I feel like Ramsay is one of the quintessential representations of D&D caring more about the end result rather than how to actually get there.
 
Moff

Moff

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,780
Joffrey was brilliantly written, alll book material, Jack Gleeson played him incredibly good. Easily the best villain of the show, you just love to hate him.
Ramsay might have done more brutal things, but that's not what matters.
 
Blackthorn

Blackthorn

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,315
London
Ramsay was a walking plot device with the sole purpose of punishing characters to illicit shock from the audience.

Joffrey was a well-developed, believable, petulant, power-mad bully child. Everyone has met a Joffrey in their life. Luckily, our real life Joffreys don't get to be kings.
 
Falchion

Falchion

Member
Oct 25, 2017
40,908
Boise
Joffrey was the kind of insufferable person in power everyone could relate to. Ramsay was just a fucked up Bond villain.
 
Linus815

Linus815

Member
Oct 29, 2017
19,711
they were both fantastic, Ramsay was especially disturbing, but ill never forgive the Ser Twainty of House Gudmen bullshit with Ramsay. Such poor writing to take out Stannis.
 
Temp_User

Temp_User

Member
Oct 30, 2017
4,691
Joffrey is better written and acted on the show. Ramsey came very close to getting X-Pac heat (ie. he got a lot of push from the writers).
 
Mashing

Mashing

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,947
I voted Ramsay becuase he is FAR worse in the books. I mean, he was pretty awful on the TV show but there are some things they do not show (wouldn't be appropriate for TV).
 
trioptimum24601

trioptimum24601

Member
Oct 25, 2017
746
ramsay is this
sunshine-coast-council-gets-tough-on-dog-attacks.jpg

joffrey is this
tumblr_lzjrsoo61q1r50h4io1_400.png

in conclusion fuck joffrey
 
Forearm_Star

Forearm_Star

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,523
Ramsey was funny until he got his hands on Sansa. Also he did his own fighting.

Joffrey killed Ned and he was such a little b*tch

edit - show watcher here
 
GungHo

GungHo

Member
Nov 27, 2017
6,126
I feel like Joffrey's misdeeds were primarily his choices to be an asshole. I feel like Ramsey was mentally ill.
 
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