Game Of Thrones - Book/TV discussions - WITH SPOILERS

Well if you didn't read book 5 then you have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. Because this is all Ironborn stuff and I actually thing it becomes really interesting. Especially since that storyline is going to merge with Dany 3.0s storyline hard. Seriously this bitch just levels up.

 

Eh, I remember Jon Snow becoming LC and getting Robb'ed by some crow, and some cliffhanger with Dany. Like I said, I just kinda tuned a lot of the Ironborn stuff out. I'm going to have to go back and read it, even if it isn't as awesome as Oberyn Martell mongoosing the Mountain.

 

Saw the Starks were going to lose and didn't want to go down with them. Bolton's were always #2 in the North and he was tired of that. War is a pretty good place to stab an ally in the back if you can ensure you'll live through the ensuing chaos.

 

woops

 

NO FUCKING STONEHEART REVEAL I'M DONE WITH THIS SERIES.

Seriously though, I feel like they missed a huge finale opportunity - Beric and Thoros arguing, Beric saying "my time is done, old friend," and then kneeling over the corpse would have been a perfect way to end the season - especially if the last shot was UnCat's eyes snapping open. But fucking Daenerys crowdsurfing? Give me a break. Fucking boring.

 

You must be drunk, because if you've been paying attention this is the first half of book 3. Why would they reveal stoneheart when they still have half a book to go? It's going to be the reveal at the end of NEXT season. Come on man, pay attention!

 

I'm only about 1/4 way through ADWD. Thanks for spoiling the whole Reek thing for me, HBO. Fuckers.

 

Littlefinger wasn't as ruthless or as evil in the books as he was in the TV show right? They make him look like a more coherent Joker, in terms of wanting to watch the world burn. I mean I know he wanted to make money and move up but I do not remember him offing people directly (until he pushed old girl and the singer out the Moon Door) at all.

 

I don't think it was watching the world burn as it was a hidden endgame. He clearly enjoys power and money, he has an obsesssion with Sansa/Cat, but I get the impression there's supposed to be something else behind all of it.

He wasn't terribly ruthless, in the books I saw him as someone who didn't kill without reason but didn't shirk away from it wither. Sort of like a more clever, less fucked-in-the-head Roose.

 

I may have been a little drunk, but there are a few reasons why I and many others on the interwebs felt they should have done Stoneheart last night, or at least teased it.

1) Beric and Thoros have had great scenes this season that have won them a whole bunch of fans, even among book readers - like this one (at about 4:30) in which Thoros explains how he resurrects Beric:

That scene, and the Beric/Thoros/Arya scene ("Are you my mother, Thoros?"), were so fucking well done and evocative that I can't imagine the showrunners are dumb enough to leave Beric's eventual argument with Thoros (who is against resurrecting Cat) and sacrifice as an off-screen event like it was in the book. Which means that...

2) If they're going to show, or at least tease the resurrection, it needs to be soon. It happens chronologically 3 days after the Red Wedding. Arya wolfdreaming as Nymeria finds her corpse in the river, and drags it out. The BWB find it shortly thereafter and the resurrection happens. Not only is this a great opportunity to show that Bran isn't the only Stark that's a warg, but it is important to explain "where the fuck did the BWB get Cat's body from anyway" if they do, for some unfathomably foolish reason, decide to leave the actual event offscreen. I think that, at least, should have taken place last night (in an episode called "Mother," of all things), but if they wait any longer than the first episode of s4 they will have blown it entirely.

3) The big argument against it I'm seeing on Reddit is "well it's only been a week, the show watchers need to suffer for a while longer thinking all hope is lost, if they revealed it now it would dampen the impact of the RW," which I think is a crock of shit. Given the choice between 12 months for the reveal and one week, I'd say that one week is probably much closer to the timeframe after the Red Wedding that most readers got to the reveal. If the whole thing happens off-screen, a year from now, the anger over the RW will have died down, people will be over it, and the reveal will elicit more of a "What the fuck did I miss? Where did she come from? Why's she with this drunk guy? What happened to that other guy?" response, and they will have to awkwardly shoehorn in some dialogue explaining how it all happened. It's easier and more effective in a visual medium to show it, and showing it sooner rather than later would have elicited a "FUCK YEAH SHE IS GONNA MURDER SOME FREYS IT'S RAMPAGE TIME I'M SO PUMPED FOR NEXT SEASON!" from the fanbase, many of whom are probably feeling awfully let-down at this point at the prospect of another season of Dany being fucking boring, Bran wandering around (where the fuck is Coldhands?!), and the Lannisters seeming to have everything go their way.

4) The episode was called "Mhysa," which means "mother," and a Stoneheart twist ending after the obvious Dany-mother bit would have been worlds more interesting and fit the title equally well. Daenerys is seriously boring, and Barristan the Bored hasn't even gotten to draw his sword yet. Boring and dull.

5) Finally, they've already proven that they're willing to fudge the book's timelines a bit. If they're going to be strict with this kind of thing, as many seem to want, that means we can look forward to the most boring season of television of all time when we hit AFFC and the entire first season (assuming they do a 2-season split again) takes place in Dorne with an entirely new cast of characters, and then we have to wait until ADWD to learn what the fuck was going on in Westeros the whole time. The possibilities are awful.

Tl;dr - Stoneheart tease would have been way more effective to end the season than the fucking Daenerys crowdsurfing scene was, because Stoneheart is badass, Beric and Thoros are badass, Barristan Selmy is badass, and Dany is dull as fuck.

 

Well the problem with the Stoneheart is that she pops up, does nothing, with a character know nothing about, then vanishes again. So you'd reveal her, and shelve her for basically two seasons. They can move some stuff up, but they can't move THAT much stuff up. I agree there was no reason not to introduce Coldhands, but its obvious they're trying to cut as many extra characters as possible. Coldhands really just guides them, with Jojen not being sick, I bet he'll be taking on those responsibilities. Also, Coldhands is obviously just Uncle Benjen right, so there obviously isn't really a huge need to bring him back except to wink at the book readers. Also all the non-book readers loved Mhysa because it was a resolution of all the things that happened. All the action has to have after effects and you need to see those in a full blown world which GoT is supposed to have, even though its difficult to get in the show.

 

For what it's worth, my non-reader girlfriend disliked the ending, but I've also seen positive things said.

Is the Coldhands bit common knowledge? Because this is the first I've read of it, but it makes sense.

 

Unless it's a new character, best bet is Benjen or the guy who was running with Qhorin and Jon. Probably the best evidence supporting the Benjen theory is that Starks only seem to have horrible deaths in firsthand detail, and the theory leaves the door open for that.

 

Its just my guess because the other guys came back as deadmen, and he never came back. As it always is in storytelling, no body, no death.

 

In the books, I always just assumed it was Benjen and that he'd found some way to not become a white walker. I'm sure GRRM will have some crazy twist to it, though. Maybe it will be Ned.

 

No way it will be Ned, but this reminds me, wasn't there some really crazy hinting about something going on in the Winterfell crypts? I can't remember the details, but there was something that was hinted at being really important later on.

 

I bounced it around a few book readers in the office, they definitely think it is Benjen. I don't remember anything about the crypts besides them being a creepy place that Bran had a few dreams about down there, but nothing concrete.

 

It's not Benjen. In the books Leaf says "they killed [Coldhands] long ago." Leaf is pretty old and Benjen has only been missing a couple years so it's very unlikely Leaf would consider that "long ago."

A better candidate would be Brynden Rivers or The Night's King.

 

NSFW Warning.

GAME OF SCORES: A supercut of Game of Thrones sex scenes

<a class="postlink" href="http://vimeo.com/66703817" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://vimeo.com/66703817</a>

 

I haven't read the thread because I'm afraid to ruin any surprises for coming books but I have to say the following after reading A Feast for Crows: ('He' is George Marting)

He knows that he fucked me and he fucked you too. I'm not upset about the time it takes to complete a book nor characters that I like dying off. I'm upset with devoting the majority of a book to characters that have either never been mentioned before or only in whispers, chewing up page after page of pointless family offshoots, descriptions of food, clothing and dreams, quietly burning the credit earned from the brilliance of previous books. He's left entire story lines and characters alone and in the dark only speaking of them in Chinese whispers accomplishing in 500 pages what can be done in 50. It feels like self flagellation at his brilliant ability to string things out perhaps because he doesn't know where they are going. The end of book disclaimer gives weight to these feelings. So many chapters where I had to forcibly quiet the voice inside me that kept ranting 'I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THESE CHARACTERS!' while he mocked and smiled because he knew I was turning the pages. There is no resolution in any way for anyone. 1 question answered 10 more posed. This isn't a sweeps week cliff hanger in book form is it?

I understand that it is a robust world peopled by multi-dimensional characters. Cersei getting her comeuppance and Jamie's turn around along with Arya/Cat hopefully finding herself (WTF?! She's blind? Fuck YOU!), Sam finally getting some poonani, Jon finding his place as Lord Commander and the clear separation of his two selves were all great moments. Slogging through waist deep shit to get there though was not fun. He knew it when he published it, else-wise there would be no fucking disclaimer at the end.

Edit: I forgot to say that the whole thing stringing out of the revelation of Cersei's trip to the local tarot card reader was just fucking bullshit. He made at least 7 references to it before coming out with it. Stop alluding to some shit that has such little pay off when its revealed.