THE GAME OF THRONES/ASOIAF SPOILER THREAD (WARNING: SPOILERS)

damn they sure got rid of daenerys' khalasar or whatever just like that. so now, she truly has absolutely no one with her? also, when are we going to see her get her unsullied by unleashing the dragons? now would seem to be the right time since she has no army or anything to speak of, but then again when you see the size of her dragons they don't look like they could burn anyone. what a weak little flame dragon dude had. tbh daenerys' story was one of the least interesting in the books imo and they are making it even less appealing in the show.

Well, old man Whitebeard is going to show up, and she has Jorah?

Drogon is still small in the House of the Undying, they would have time to grow by the time they get to Astapor. He's still small enough to sit on her shoulder at that stage.

i'm pretty excited about her going into the House of the Undying! that was one of my favourite parts in the book!

i'm still slogging through book 4...

it gets much better through the last quarter, but fuck, it is sloggy.

ok that is good to know - i am over half of the way through

Book 4 will seem much better once you have read book 5. They reflect each other's strengths. I kind of want to take my ebooks of books 4 and 5 and shuffle the chapters together cuz that's really how it should be read. (Or has someone already done that?)

I agree, I'm over the halfway point with ADWD and it's very true, especially once the timelines join up again.

I'm finding ADWD a much quicker read than AFFC, I'm only holding back cos I know there isn't going to be one to go onto.

I've also not found AFFC & ADWD as a bad as people say; I imagine not having to wait 11 years for them helps!

i'm pretty excited about her going into the House of the Undying!

If done well, it has the potential to be fantastic.

i just can't imagine how it could be done well

claustrophobia-inducing hallways, smokey darkness, creepy ghosts, general foreboding

bloody walls, stench of death, etc

what a tv screen can do with that can only fall well short of what the imagination can, that is the problem. if they figure out how to film "general foreboding" they are in with a shot.

have you ever seen a good horror movie

seriously!
i think they can do it.

I hope we get Rhaegar

yea! harp playing rhaegar hallucination would be awesome!

possibly related, has anyone rewatched episode 1 to see of mance rayder was actually at winterfell during the feast?

huh?

mance reveals that he was at the feast for king robert's arrival

but Mance hasn't appeared on the show

no need to go back and check, mance simply hadnt been cast yet

and he doesn't turn up til ASOS anyway

would be a cool easter egg tho

We're probably just getting the Black Lodge.

So I think this episode came the closest yet to containing nothing actually from the book. Which is fine; obv it makes the show more suspenseful for longtime readers...

jon lewis otm. i spent a lot of the episode wondering if my memory had failed me that much that i remembered this all wrong.

however, does it bother any one else that in the tv show every one talks really openly about cersei & jamie fucking, especially these two. the scene where cersei opens up to tyrion felt really wrong to me. not only does she admit having had joffrey & kids with her brother, which in the books she only admits after a lot happens, she also uses that opportunity to say she has no control over joffrey and that she's afraid of him/regrets he's the new king and not tommen or myrcella (i'll admit i wasn't giving this scene my full attention cos my flatmate had questions so could be wrong on the whole not liking joffrey bit). in the books jamie & cersei sleeping together is more of a rumour that a few people actually know to be true, but that cersei & jamie actively deny, whereas here it seems like its common knowledge and hardly anyone gives a fuck. and cersei is completely blind when it comes to joffrey, basically giving him a free pass for any & everything, which is a strange contrast to how she sees him in the tv show.

Tyrion knows both in the books & show: in the book he even says "Who you lie with is no matter to me...although it doesn't seem quite just that you should open your legs for one brother and not the other" which seems rather more open than just talking about the kids. He also makes a few allusions to it in episode 1. The book can't really show you how widespread the rumours are but they are widespread, and the starving peasants in King's Landing are going to latch onto any unpleasant rumour going.

yeah tyrion knows about it (and i included him in the people who knew the rumour to be true). its just i found it kind of surprising to see how open cersei & jamie are about it when in the books it felt like they were no where near admitting it. in the books it felt like this burden that the two carried around without being able to say it because they knew other people would not look kindly upon it. here it's like " yeah i fucked my sister/brother, it was awesome! also, those kids come from this incestuous relationship, but hey u know, no biggie"

and, correct me if i'm wrong, the only time either one of them openly acknowledges it is when cersei gets captured by the septons? also yeah in the books the rumour is very widespread, i mean stannis putsup messages in every village in westeros talking about this !

tbh i guess it's a bit harder for the tv show to convey that message without having one of the two involved copping to having sex with his brother/sister. if anyone else says it i guess viewers could think that its just a rumour?

Well Cersei iirc was all about keeping it secret but Jaime, not so much. He talks to Ilyn Payne about it a lot. Also, Kevan (their uncle) knows about it and refers to it.

The taboo is mostly because Cersei's the Queen & her kids are in the line of succession; the Targaryens had largely phased out of marrying their siblings and it is frowned upon. Daenerys's parents were siblings.

here it's like " yeah i fucked my sister/brother, it was awesome! also, those kids come from this incestuous relationship, but hey u know, no biggie"

Cersei seemed pretty distraught at the idea that incest has caused Joffrey's incurable case of evil little shit-itis, I don't think it was nbd to her.

ya guess so. i mean i still have some problems with the way this strays from those chars attitudes in the books, but there was no way things would be exactly the same. tbh this isn't really important, so dunno why i felt the need to write it out.

Y'all gotta remember, too, the book contains a shit-tonne of exposition via internal monologue, especially concerning Westeros history. The Arya-Tywin and Tyrion-Cersei conversations imo were a super-effective way of bringing the audience up-to-date re: the Targaryens, dragons.

Most changes/omissions have been improvements, as far as I'm concerned. The assassination of 11 of the 13 was some much needed drama in an otherwise uneventful Daenarys arc

Yeah I like most of the changes too, don't get me wrong.

Wasn't there a LOT more about The Mountain in Book 2? I seem to remember him being this malevolent force pillaging the Riverlands

yeah there was. I guess there'll be more whenever the Brotherhood shows up?

I don't want to come off like some kind of bloodthirsty maniac, but I hope that HBO isn't shying away from making Arya a remorseless killing machine.

well she was thinking about stabbing tywin when he was talking with his back to her. so i guess she's still on track to being a killing machine.

True, but by this time in the books, her body count consisted of more than just a single fat boy.

true. she does get ppl killed though. can't wait to see "a man knows" dude change looks when she tells him to kill himself.
also, reading the other thread, you say metal mask chick is quaithe. and now i'm blanking out on who she is. is she the one that tells dany she'll be betrayed thrice, loved thrice etc ?

I'm also looking forward to Arya telling Jaqen to kill himself, if only to remember the mechanics of her gambit!

Damn, now I'm not sure about Quaithe. I want to say yes, though I can't shake the possibility that she gets that warning in the Houses of the Holy Undying. But basically, she's sort of an apparition that appears to Dany randomly to drops some prophetic business.

glad to see i'm not the only one who's confused about metal mask chick. dany does get the warning from an apparition in the house of the undying - there's no way they'll bypass that scene and have the prophecies come to dany via metal mask chick? right?

also iirc arya's gambit is basically that she wants jaqen to help her free the northmen in harrenhal. he refuses so she orders him to kill himself or smth like that?

yeah she needs him to do more than just one assassination to free them so she names him and holds him hostage to his own promise unless he helps her

I think that Osha's going to be escorting Bran beyond the Wall, and someone else will take Rickon (I have a suspicion/hope that it's Maester Luwin).

Disappointed that we still didn't get House of the Undying, but seeing Luwin pretty much established as Rickon's replacement nanny made me happy.

Really digging the exposition of Robb + whats-her-name

BLACKWATER.

... WASN'T THAT GOOD.

Considering how hyped this episode was, I thought it was pretty damn good.

I haven't read the books, but from the spoilers I've read, it looks like Tyrion got off a lot easier with that cut to his face than he did in the books, right? Like, his nose is still there.

he is TV lead character injured

Also, did they change the guy that cut him from being a dude that was supposed to be on his side but betrayed him to just being some big random enemy? I didn't recognize the guy.