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

Do the Freys know?

new sample chapter from winds of winter: http://georgerrmartin.com/if-sample.html

sweet illustration

Beyonce is Arianne Martell?!?!

I was waiting to use that since I read the story yesterday. I knew GRRM would be productive now that his football season is over.

quick reminder to the unwary clicker, this is the spoiler thread
also i guess this is potentially a spoiler about a difference between the books and the tv show, so if that is something you are bothered about this is fair warning

all that being said...

i think i have mentioned before that a good friend of mine knows the actor who plays robb. the guy himself has said that he will be appearing in seasons - seasons plural - after season 3. SEASONS PLURAL. has someone (max?) seen an advance copy of season 3 to help corroborate?

I think it may be that Storm of Swords is broken into 2 seasons because it is so long.

i should have emphasized that this was seasons, plural

Red Wedding is slated to happen this season though...

so he's supposed to show up even in season 5? seems like a stretch...

i havent seen any of s3 but! maybe flashbacks?

or maybe like--he might be on contract for 5 seasons even if they dont play on using him?

i wondered about flashbacks. but why? or i guess they could zombie him, but again... i am hoping this was some kind of denial/big talk

supposedly red wedding is happening in the 9th ep of this season, much like they put the biggest moments from the past 2 seasons in the 9th ep? or at least they released the episode titles and the title of that one is 'the rains of castamere' so what else could it be really

Robb Zombie?

Aw cmon, I thought that was mildly clever!

no spoilers

My bad. ._.

But anyway, maybe that's the route they take instead of UnCat?

feels like way to big a shift away from the books imo.

ffs, xpost

Premier was pretty good overall.

things I liked:

-Tywin/Tyrion scene. So cold.
-Margaery Tyrell's PR stunt + playing Joffrey and Cersei against each other
-Glad they threw out the "Whitebeard" stuff and just let Barristan Selmy be himself.
-The giant looked pretty cool. More human-like than in the books, but just weird enough.
-The stuff with Danaerys and the Unsullied was great and played pretty much exactly as in the books.
-Dragon fishing. Those critters are so fucking cute. I want one.

things I did not care for:
-Weird, awkward cold opening.
-Mance Rayder introduction felt a tad off, especially Jon's justification for joining the wildlings.
-No mammoths (yet). I hope they don't save them for next season or omit them entirely. That would suck.
-No Strong Belwas ;_; He was such a colorful, over-the-top character in the books. I'll miss him.

I actively cannot wait for Robb to die. They've destroyed Catelyn's character & his. The showmakers seem to love taking the tropes subverted by GRRM and playing them straight.

no strong belwas?? fuck that

the scene where he takes a victory shit in front of the whole city is probably the highlight of literature in the last century

judging by typical practice on the show, they will keep that highlight but simplify things by having another character drop the load

No Strong Belwas ;_;

OTM. Pretty much agree with all of Latebloomer's points actually.

Glad to see Tormund, always had a soft spot for him.

I was going to say that Strong Belwas is so one-dimensional that leaving him out is no big loss but then H4A set me right straight.

judging by typical practice on the show, they will keep that highlight but simplify things by having another character drop the load

Obviously Barristan.

Love Tormund in the books, but this guy hasn't show his joie de vivre yet. I mean, not a single dick joke out of him yet. ;_;

(Let's just pretend I know English and that I originally wrote "shown" in my previous post.)

wait do we know for sure that strong belwas is out? might he just make his appearance differently?

Don't think he's been announced in the cast.

Barristan the Load.

WHERE ARE MY MAMMOTHS

Don't think we'll be getting the Bloody Mummers.

Not seen #2 yet (do the Yanks get this stuff before us Britishers?) but I've gotta say that I really wasn't impressed with the first episode whatsoever.

Just feels like there's a few too many balls in the air right now, the different plots seemed to be getting about half as much air-time as they could do with. Just me feeling this way?

I hope they can rein it in a bit before too long(obvs. the number of characters is gonna drop pretty dramatically quite soon). Would be delighted for them to prove me wrong, but right now I'm concerned that this show is going to go a bit off the boil (until the end of the season anyway, which will surely be all kinds of batshit crazy)

Don't think we'll be getting the Bloody Mummers.
we are, but Vargo Hoat has a different name. And the hand is definitely going.

post about the "200 northmen slaughtered like sheep" at harrenhal got me thinking. i really don't know who these people are supposed to be. were these the non-bolton elements of a northern contingent, killed by the bolton troops before they head of in the direction of riverrun? they seem to be holding back the elements of the bolton betrayal for a big splashy reveal but it is making unsatisfying holes in the narrative

also: show speculation/spoiler

fairly obvious but if you hadn't already realized, the guy who says he's going to help theon escape is ramsay. in the preview of next week you see him releasing theon into the woods, to be hunted.

WHERE ARE MY MAMMOTHS

It was either them or the giant, my guess.

Just feels like there's a few too many balls in the air right now, the different plots seemed to be getting about half as much air-time as they could do with. Just me feeling this way?

My first instinct was to say no (I haven't liked either episode this season, btw), but trying to figure out why, it's probably because everything's moving really slowly, a lot of boring talk sandwiching the set pieces, which haven't been that impressive to begin with (Gwen Christie doesn't handle a sword that well, imo), i.e. too many plots diluting the storytelling.

Roberto, I may have read this instead of getting it from the episode itself, but I believ the Mountain killed a bunch of prisoners before high-tailing it out of Harrenhal.

I am *not* looking forward to the Theon/Ramsay stuff. Thought the Reek stuff was insipid to begin with, now it looks like we're getting torture porn too with it now, hoorah.

Also been wondering, if R + L = J, how are they going to swing that on the show? It's going to be pretty anticlimactic considering where R and L currently are.

Last bit: should people not point out things like thomp's post in the other thread? That's just going to validate things to the non-book readers and remove doubt that they're spoilers.

totally lost here, can't seem to figure out who R+L = J are.

Rhaegar + Lyanna = Jon? Which, let's face it, pretty much has to be the case now unless GRRM is pulling an almighty swerve

ah ok thx. but then i don't understand leee's comment about how it'd be really anticlimactic considering where R and L are. i mean they're dead and all but that's never stopped a show.

I get what he means to the extent that by this point in the books, sooooo much has been made of Lyanna and Rhaegar's backstory (the heavy hints that them absconding was an elopement rather than a kidnap, the flashbacks to Ned Stark battling the Kingsguard at the Tower of Joy, 'Promise me Ned', that little story about the tourney in the year of the False Spring that Meera tells Bran and Jojen, and about a dozen other little odds and ends scatted through the text) that it's basically impossible to miss that whole subplot and see where it's leading.

But the series has made so little of any of it, Rhaegar and Lyanna haven't really been present whatsoever except for the first ep. when Robert Baratheon goes to visit Lyanna's tomb and that little bit of the story gets told.

Basically I totally see why they feel that they feel that stuff is not totally essential so far and could be cut, and of course they could always retcon it back during a later series somehow. But the "WHO IS JON SNOW?" storyline, which is essentially the whole thrust of his narrative and is clearly building to the massive reveal (this'll be Howland Reed's function, right?), just isn't really present in the tv show. If they reveal it with this little build it'll probably just raise a bit of a shrug from peeps who've not read the books. "Oh, so Jon and Dany are related?" or whatever.

Yeah Windsor 100% otm, better than I could've explained it, too.

R and L have been such non-entities on the show that bringing them in only via exposition would imo be bad storytelling. And since the show doesn't really do flashbacks outside of the House of the Undying and some green dreams, I don't see the actual characters getting onscreen, which makes me wonder if Jon's parentage matters on a) the show (apparently no) and b) the books.

maybe they think seeding something in early seasons for a reveal in later seasons is a waste of time, and they'll just go heavy on it closer to the time. but in the books it has got to be a Big Deal surely

thanks for the refresher. it's got me to think about stupid scenarios for the books, such as jon ending up with daenerys, bro&sis reunited, targaryen style (wait he's actually daenerys' nephew right?) and they'll rule it all with their dragons and giants&mammoths. only problem to that is we're supposed to believe jon's been killed at the wall no?

Flat out not having it that Jon Snow is dead at this point, largely due to the aforementioned foreshadowing regarding the importance of his parentage (btw, Dany/Jon/Tyrion turning out to be Targaryens each riding their own dragon is gonna happen fo sho).

Tbh while I luurrrve GRRM’s swerves and twists, I do think his ‘gratuitously killing off the main characters’ thing is massively overstated. At various points during the narrative we’ve been led to believe that Catelyn, Theon, Bran and Rickon have been killed only for them to pop back up, the Hound’s definitely still knocking about somewhere out there, the Mountain’s about to make his comeback as a zombie bodyguard for Cersei etc. etc. And for my money Jon Snow is definitely gonna see out this story in some form or another.

Really only Ned, Robb, Tywin and Joffrey qualify as massive name characters getting the chop, and those all work perfectly for the storylines and in hindsight don’t seem so WTF as they did at first. Four big characters in 5 books isn't outrageous, even if it is still more than say Potter or LOTR or whatever.

Part of the reason I’m excited for the next book is that I think we really ought to be over the hump of the narrative now, there are so many characters running around with enough build and backstory for us to care (and who have all managed to more or less avoid each other so far) that we ought to be able to see some pretty spectacular showdowns and deaths coming up. No reason why GRRM shouldn’t return to the pacing of Storm of Swords any time from now, basically.

Oh and Renly I spose. And Viserys. And Khal Drogo. And Lord Mormont. Alright, there is quite a few. But I'd argue that these guys aren't really essential.

yeah, i think most readers have gotten a bit tired of Martin's fakeout deaths. Hence the rather underwhelmed reaction to Jon Snow's supposed demise