When you play the Game of Thrones...

[Closet_Skeleton]

I just finished the 3rd book. Man was that depressing. It certainly makes me still feel the whole story is very sisyphean.

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The only thing that keeps me going is that the book makes it clear that the Freys will get what's coming to them.

I get the idea that protaganists shouldn't be unstoppable supermen who can't be challenged but do they all have to be such failures?

Failures?

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That's the book where Dany conquors three cities without breaking a sweat, Joffery bites it and Samwell Tarly has his crowning moments of awesome. The 2nd book is the depressing one.

[Axolotl]

Failures?

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That's the book where Dany conquors three cities without breaking a sweat, Joffery bites it and Samwell Tarly has his crowning moments of awesome. The 2nd book is the depressing one.

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Joffery isn't killed by any of the main characters though, Littlefinger does it. With the PoV characters Tyrion loses everything, Jaime becomes a PoV character and then loses the one thing that made him powerful. Now granted they're Lannisters but the Starks don't do any better, Arya is unable to achive anything, Sansa remains in a pit of misery, Catelyn makes a mistake that helps cause Robb to lose and Bran spends the whole book running away. For every character who succeds at anything there are five others who don't.

EDIT and as for Daenerys she conquors two cities one of which immediately reverts back to brutal tyranny the moment she leaves.

[Weezer]

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I'm wondering with the change in medium, how will they handle when Selmy is disguised as a squire as he's serving Dany? In the book they just didn't give enough physical detail to make it clear who it was until the reveal but they can't do that in TV series. Though that's a ways away, who knows if we'll get to it.

[Demon 997]

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I'm wondering with the change in medium, how will they handle when Selmy is disguised as a squire as he's serving Dany? In the book they just didn't give enough physical detail to make it clear who it was until the reveal but they can't do that in TV series. Though that's a ways away, who knows if we'll get to it.

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Simple. Selmy disappears for a season or two at this point, so when he reappears with a different costume and makeup few non-readers will know him and the readers already know.

[Closet_Skeleton]

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Joffery isn't killed by any of the main characters though, Littlefinger does it. With the PoV characters Tyrion loses everything, Jaime becomes a PoV character and then loses the one thing that made him powerful. Now granted they're Lannisters but the Starks don't do any better, Arya is unable to achive anything, Sansa remains in a pit of misery, Catelyn makes a mistake that helps cause Robb to lose and Bran spends the whole book running away. For every character who succeds at anything there are five others who don't.

I don't quite agree.

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Tyrion loses everything, but he gets revenge on his dad, so that's a victory, and what he loses was basically his lost cause of trying to do good despite the fact that nobody wanted him to.

Jaime losing his hand feels like a blessing in disguise to me. It forces Jaime to grow in ways he wouldn't have before. Paradoxically his strength was a crutch.

Sansa isn't in a 'pit of misery' with Littlefinger. You don't get to find out what her new status quo is until the next book but it isn't as bad as King's Landing was for her.

Arya similarly has achieved something, it just isn't obvious what until A Feast For Crows.

The Red Wedding is 75% through A Storm of Swords. The actual ending stretch I find mostly positive.

Book Spoilers:

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I'm wondering with the change in medium, how will they handle when Selmy is disguised as a squire as he's serving Dany? In the book they just didn't give enough physical detail to make it clear who it was until the reveal but they can't do that in TV series. Though that's a ways away, who knows if we'll get to it.

It never really felt like Martin was hiding that to be honest. It was kind of rediculously obvious.

[Cristo Meyers]

It never really felt like Martin was hiding that to be honest. It was kind of rediculously obvious.

And here I sit having never put those two together until just now...

...I feel dumb.

For the TV series: am I the only one that is loving it whenever Drogo gets into his big speeches? The actor just steals the stage every time.

[Closet_Skeleton]

And here I sit having never put those two together until just now...

...I feel dumb.

For the TV series: am I the only one that is loving it whenever Drogo gets into his big speeches? The actor just steals the stage every time.

Apparently he got the part by walking right into the audition and doing a Hawaian war chant.

[The Glyphstone]

Wait, Drogo actually gets to say more than half a dozen words in a row in this episode? I really need to get caught up, I'm lagging behind a few episodes already.

[Cristo Meyers]

Apparently he got the part by walking right into the audition and doing a Hawaian war chant.

I'll believe it.

Whatever he did, it worked. He's got one hell of a stage presence.

Wait, Drogo actually gets to say more than half a dozen words in a row in this episode? I really need to get caught up, I'm lagging behind a few episodes already.

Two big monologues in the past two issues, the most recent during a swordfight.

[Seerow]

Yeah Drogo is pretty awesome this episode.

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I felt sad knowing that little cut that he let the other guy give him is going to be what kills him. I imagined the wound that festers and kills him as being more major than that

[Zocelot]

Yeah Drogo is pretty awesome this episode.

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I felt sad knowing that little cut that he let the other guy give him is going to be what kills him. I imagined the wound that festers and kills him as being more major than that

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Yeah, the cut really looks tiny. I think in the books, his nipple was hanging off. Could be they make it so that Mirri is actively trying to kill Drogo

[Cristo Meyers]

Yeah Drogo is pretty awesome this episode.

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I felt sad knowing that little cut that he let the other guy give him is going to be what kills him. I imagined the wound that festers and kills him as being more major than that

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Yeah, same here. The book gave me the impression of a fairly messy wound, not the 3 inch cut he got here.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the fact that we actually saw how he got it, rather than "What, this? I got this off screen, killing two rival Khals..."

[Seerow]

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Yeah, the cut really looks tiny. I think in the books, his nipple was hanging off. Could be they make it so that Mirri is actively trying to kill Drogo

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I thought it was fairly clear she caused it to fester with a bad poultice or something in the book, at least once she revealed her motives after making Zombie Drogo. But with a wound that small, I can't see Dany swallowing complications/festering if it was being cleaned by someone competent, as MMD claims herself to be.

While it makes the sabotage obvious to the audience, it also makes it more obvious to the characters, and makes it obvious much sooner than it should be, I think.

[Klose_the_Sith]

I just finished the 3rd book. Man was that depressing. It certainly makes me still feel the whole story is very sisyphean.

That's funny, a few pages back I was doing the exact same thing over the exact same topic

Still, things pick up ... sort of.

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I kind of doubt I'll ever love these books as much again as I did before the Red Wedding, but some things happen that slowly tip the scales backwards. The fact that the Freys, Boltons and Lannisters are effectively doomed springs to mind

[Derthric]

That's funny, a few pages back I was doing the exact same thing over the exact same topic

Still, things pick up ... sort of.

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I kind of doubt I'll ever love these books as much again as I did before the Red Wedding, but some things happen that slowly tip the scales backwards. The fact that the Freys, Boltons and Lannisters are effectively doomed springs to mind

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I hold out hope that Bran will pull off some super awesome special comeback of the Starks by leading a warging army to liberate the Greatjon and he will smash the twins and the dreadfort to bits. A guy can dream

[Closet_Skeleton]

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I hold out hope that Bran will pull off some super awesome special comeback of the Starks by leading a warging army to liberate the Greatjon and he will smash the twins and the dreadfort to bits. A guy can dream

I'd want him to warg into a giant squid but the Greyjoys would have to sue him.

[Flickerdart]

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I hold out hope that Bran will pull off some super awesome special comeback of the Starks by leading a warging army to liberate the Greatjon and he will smash the twins and the dreadfort to bits. A guy can dream

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Personally I think that Harrenhal will hang around until Dany gets herself together, and then gets dragon'd. Again. Seeing as how Bran is hanging around in the North, his awesome comeback might be connected to Stannis' huge army.

On the topic of Drogo,

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do Dothraki use poisons? The guy he killed seems like the kind of jerk that would walk around with a poisoned blade. Even if it wasn't poisoned...I doubt those people have the best hygiene. The maegi might have just not given a damn, or not actually known all that much about medicine. >_>

[hamlet]

On the topic of Drogo,

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do Dothraki use poisons? The guy he killed seems like the kind of jerk that would walk around with a poisoned blade. Even if it wasn't poisoned...I doubt those people have the best hygiene. The maegi might have just not given a damn, or not actually known all that much about medicine. >_>

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Not sure if you've read the book, so I'll drop a reply in a nested spoiler.

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The show handled the scene slightly differently. In the novel, Drogo is already wounded, quite nastily all things considered, by the time the battle is through rather than being wounded by the irate warrior as seen in the show. It's implied, rather indirectly, that Mirri Maz Dur might have, during her "ministrations" made the wound worse, or ensured that it got infected and septic enough to kill the Khal as a form of revenge.

In the show . . . I don't know. I wouldn't put it past the guy to have poisoned or soiled the blade, but that's kind of multiplying entities when simple infection would have done it.

[Klose_the_Sith]

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I hold out hope that Bran will pull off some super awesome special comeback of the Starks by leading a warging army to liberate the Greatjon and he will smash the twins and the dreadfort to bits. A guy can dream

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One of the things I regret most about the series is just how ****'n young Rickon is, because otherwise he'd be a perfect vengeful Barbarian archetype in the making. A Northern Robert Baratheon, but with succession clearly lying in the hands of his older, calmer and wiser brother to keep the lands in good order.

But as you say, we do but dream.

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Personally I think that Harrenhal will hang around until Dany gets herself together, and then gets dragon'd. Again. Seeing as how Bran is hanging around in the North, his awesome comeback might be connected to Stannis' huge army.

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Huge army? From Stannis?

Stannis has fewer men / knights now then he did before he started his invasion of Westeros. Unless you mean the wildling host, but I'll refer to Robert Baratheon's famous riddle "Which is the bigger number, five or one?"

[hamlet]

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Huge army? From Stannis?

Stannis has fewer men / knights now then he did before he started his invasion of Westeros. Unless you mean the wildling host, but I'll refer to Robert Baratheon's famous riddle "Which is the bigger number, five or one?"

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Stannis, as far as my money is concerned, still has a major role to play, above and beyond what he's doing now.

What, precisely?

No freakin' clue, but I suspect it's going to get everybody into a twist.

Maybe he really is Azor Ahai reborn . . .

[Alarra]

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I thought it was fairly clear she caused it to fester with a bad poultice or something in the book, at least once she revealed her motives after making Zombie Drogo. But with a wound that small, I can't see Dany swallowing complications/festering if it was being cleaned by someone competent, as MMD claims herself to be.

While it makes the sabotage obvious to the audience, it also makes it more obvious to the characters, and makes it obvious much sooner than it should be, I think.

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Maybe I read this wrong (I'm currently rereading the books, and read this section sometime last week), but I thought that the poultice that Mirri made would have helped him, but it burned and he didn't trust her, so Drogo replaced it later with something soothing that someone else made him, and that's what caused the wound to fester. I was under the impression that her treachery was not telling Dany the cost of her magic and deliberately hiding the fact that it would kill the baby.

[Cristo Meyers]

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Maybe I read this wrong (I'm currently rereading the books, and read this section sometime last week), but I thought that the poultice that Mirri made would have helped him, but it burned and he didn't trust her, so Drogo replaced it later with something soothing that someone else made him, and that's what caused the wound to fester. I was under the impression that her treachery was not telling Dany the cost of her magic and deliberately hiding the fact that it would kill the baby.

That's the way I read it too.

[Sinfonian]

That's the way I read it too.

Same here.

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If you were paying attention, one of the ingredients for his poultice was bread mold, most likely penicillin. That should have been able to prevent most infections (and was understandably used in real folk healing for quite a long time). Drogo refused to continue wearing the thing, and that's why it festered as it did. That makes more sense for GRRM's style: a character being reckless and stubborn ruins the very thing that would have saved them.

[hamlet]

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Maybe I read this wrong (I'm currently rereading the books, and read this section sometime last week), but I thought that the poultice that Mirri made would have helped him, but it burned and he didn't trust her, so Drogo replaced it later with something soothing that someone else made him, and that's what caused the wound to fester. I was under the impression that her treachery was not telling Dany the cost of her magic and deliberately hiding the fact that it would kill the baby.

It's open to interpretation.

[Cog]

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Stannis, as far as my money is concerned, still has a major role to play, above and beyond what he's doing now.

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I suspect this is true. There's a lot of talk about Tyrion being the "third head of the dragon", but the Baratheon claim to the throne is based on them having Targ blood a few generations back. Add in R+L=J, and you have a full set; you've got a good geographic representation, too - Jon from the north, Stannis from the south, and Daenerys from abroad.

[Axolotl]

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I suspect this is true. There's a lot of talk about Tyrion being the "third head of the dragon", but the Baratheon claim to the throne is based on them having Targ blood a few generations back. Add in R+L=J, and you have a full set; you've got a good geographic representation, too - Jon from the north, Stannis from the south, and Daenerys from abroad.

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What's R+L=J?

Also I hope when HBO does the third book they keep all the songs, especially the last of the giants.

[VanBuren]

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What's R+L=J?

Also I hope when HBO does the third book they keep all the songs, especially the last of the giants.

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It's the theory that Rhaegar and Lyanna were actually in love, and the rape was anything but. Also, that Jon isn't Ned's son at all but rather the offspring of aforementioned union.

[Da'Shain]

I just got to see the latest episode, and loved it; it was strong throughout, and had no scenes that took me out of the action thinking how different they were from the book or how little sense they made. Book spoilers further nested ...

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I particularly liked their amending of how Drogo got his wound; although I agree that it should have looked a bit more serious, this way we got to see both what a bad@$$ Drogo is and how arrogant he is, nicely foreshadowing

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his death soon.

Syrio's last stand was excellently translated; they lost the importance of armor in that fight (heck, the Lannister guards looked almost as well armored as Ser ... Meryn, was it?) and made him only defeat 4 at a time instead of I think 6 in the book, but I think they did him justice. And leaving it open like that, just as in the book ... that, combined with Syrio's belief in his one god,

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makes me think that there might actually be something to the theory that he is Jaqen H'ghar, where before I thought it highly unlikely in the books.

Ser Barristan's dismissal was perfect, and I actually found myself enjoying whatsisname's performance as Joffrey in that last scene.

Just about the only thing still bothering me is, well, the direwolves. They seem too small still, and they've simply thrown the whole bit about Ghost being mute completely out, for no reason I can fathom. How hard would it be to just edit the dog's barking out, even assuming they weren't able to train it to be silent? But that nitpick aside, the show continues to impress.

On Mirri Maz Duur:

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The book's events confused me, actually. On the one hand, her stated motivation after the deed is done suggests that she wanted Drogo dead from the start, but on the other, her original poultice seemed to have been working, and would have had Drogo not torn it off and ignored Mirri's advice entirely. Perhaps she really tried to heal him as a way to inveigle her way into his and Dany's good graces, and then simply grabbed the opportunity when it arose in order to ensure both Drogo and Dany's child's death? That's the only plan of hers that makes sense to me.

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It's the theory that Rhaegar and Lyanna were actually in love, and the rape was anything but. Also, that Jon isn't Ned's son at all but rather the offspring of aforementioned union.

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While that's the most often touted version, R+L=J does not necessarily mean that Rhaegar and Lyanna were in love, only that they conceived Jon, not Eddard and ???. Rhaegar could still have been raping her and impregnated her that way, and Lyanna could have simply wanted Ned to raise her child in secret anyway, since plenty of victims of rape still grow to love the babies born of it.

Granted, given other evidence in the books it seems more likely that Rhaegar and Lyanna were actually in love (the tourney at Harrenhal, Ned's unwillingness to share in Robert's hatred of Rhaegar and growing uncomfortable when rape is mentioned, Rhaegar's character according to most that knew him ... probably something else I've missed), but even if Jon is their child that's not necessarily the case.

[Axolotl]

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It's the theory that Rhaegar and Lyanna were actually in love, and the rape was anything but. Also, that Jon isn't Ned's son at all but rather the offspring of aforementioned union.

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That seems unlikely given how often the boo notes how much Jon looks like Eddard and Arya.

As an aside, is it true that the TV series doesn't use flashbacks or dream sequences? Because that would make it hard on them later in the series where dreams become more important.

[Seerow]

Just about the only thing still bothering me is, well, the direwolves. They seem too small still, and they've simply thrown the whole bit about Ghost being mute completely out, for no reason I can fathom. How hard would it be to just edit the dog's barking out, even assuming they weren't able to train it to be silent? But that nitpick aside, the show continues to impress.

Play that scene with your sound muted, and you'll see why. Someone on another forum described it best, if the dog was mute, it would just look like Ghost needed to pee. Without the growling it doesn't actually get across that something is wrong. It's one of those things that really doesn't translate as well to tv as you would expect.