HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

also seems weird that he came back without any, uh, impairments, other than being a bit more pale? idk i recall in the books that when dondarrion the lightning knight or w/e that is comes back it's pretty obvious that he's a zombie. like big gaping wound on his neck. or something.

having Dayne wield two swords was a total Darth Maul move (props to whoever mentioned that upthread)

lol ulysses

xp

Dondarrion looked like a zombie because he incurred injuries from actual physical combat; fortunately for Jon, he was stabbed in his torso, not his pretty face.

http://i.imgur.com/TrmsdG8.jpg

so we're just not gonna get Lady Stonheart, huh?

I thought the showrunners had already said no to that...?

So does Jon just have big, open, non-bleeding wounds?

i guess there's a lack of reference for how the logic of revivification works on the show? like it's either the Mountain or Jon Snow, at least going by the tv show? we don't have the benefit of Dondarion and Lady Stoneheart like we do in the books?

i guess this is the first season where book-readers don't really benefit from the books since it's gone so off course, now we're in the same boat as the rest of you fuckers

Dondarion was in the show

Can the reticence around Howland Reed's role at the Tower of Joy be explained solely because he stabbed a dude in the back (of the throat), and everyone was kind of embarrassed by this breach in protocol?

xxp Dondarrion was on the show a couple times, once before and once after revivifying. Also, BD and JS seem to be reborn because of religion, whereas the Mountain comes back through evil science (that's how I'm reading it anyway).

oh dang i forgot all about that

xpost ha always thought it was Howlin' Reed

I read something that suggested Lady Stoneheart is still gonna happen

Howlin' Mad Reed!

If I hadnt read all those book speculations about Ned, Howland and the jon snow thing, I'dve had no fucking idea what I was watching with the Bran flashback bit last night.

Like I dont know if its just me, but it feels like they more and more rely on people being backstory speculation nerds?

I think the Bransposition is providing exactly as much information as they want you to have

Thats a good point, given that stuff *is* just speculation. I'm terrible at going "what the hells going on?" in movies when *thats precisely the point*.

my money's on rickon to win the game of thrones

We havent heard from Littlefinger in a while...

he's in the preview for next week

Smalljon Umber is totally playing Ramsay with the offer of hostages. Ramsay's dead before the end of the season.

thought the exact same, the tone of the scene wasn't tragic or hammed up enough for osha and rickon to really be in the shit. shame about shaggz tho.

Could it be a random wolf's head? It didn't look that big.

Wtf with the fart escaping pycelle's ass when he turns and sees franken-gregor?

...I missed that! (you sure it wasnt just a chair squeak?)

fart was funny. and ya umber is totally playing ramsay. why else would he have brought osha along. she's just a rando wildling. i wonder if they know ramsay is gonna try his usually shit on her and she's gonna shiv him

def was a toot

ramsey getting got is the perfect end to this season and to begin what I hope is the fucking end of the series

I know right, like I keep telling people how stupid the show is and to please let me leave the living room or change the channel and it's like they can't even hear me. I just keep watching, unable to walk away.

http://lovelace-media.imgix.net/uploads/273/1eeff950-ed5f-0133-243e-0e1b1c96d76b.jpg

Can I ask what Lady Stoneheart's function is in the books? I mean, it sounds like a cool idea but where's the necessity in it?

Remember this is extremely spoilery

I think many book readers are asking the same question.
xpost

That was a perfectly decent episode, I thought. It looked very handsome, and all the segments worked pretty well. Glad Arya's making some progress.

There's a couple of things with Lady Stoneheart. First of all, I guess it's just sorta cool? It's a surprise, and intriguing. Secondly, it prepares the reader for other things like it to happen, though book readers still don't know if it will happen... It also helps with remembering that there's still trouble in the Riverlands, the fact that Lady Stoneheart is rooming makes the readers more interested in what is happening there - and a lot is in the books, Jamie goes to the Riverlands, not Dorne, in the books, and Brienne is there as well. And lastly, it plays into the theme of transfiguration and fluent identity, which is one of the main themes of the books, imo. Almost every major character, that doesn't die, goes through an identity change, or a purification phase. Theon becomes Reek and Arya becomes No One, for instance. Jon Snow, obviously. This also plays into how ridiculous the feudal system is, based on an idea of immutable identity, which is broken left and right as the books goes along.

I tried to keep that non-spoilers, but...

I'd briefly summarize stoneheart as the personification of violent revenge as terribly persuasive, extremely confused, and (literally) not a great look. Which seems to me to tie into a lot of Martin's issues with war.

Good analysis, Frederik.

I'm assuming they're not bothering with the Riverlands given all of that, and it would probably be a mistake for the series to widen the scope even more at this stage.

I don't know what the riverlands are like but sounds cool though.

My enthusiasm tends to drop when we go to the sunny sandy places and I don't know how much that's due to the story or me just not being too fond of those settings. Probably both.

Okay, thanks, I think I get it now. Not sure if the tv-series really needs it though. Seems like a very writerly device that wouldn't necessarily translate too well into the series as we have it.

The Riverlands are where Catherine Stark, née Tully, was originally from, and it's where the war mainly took place in seasons 1-3 (the whole reason the Freys and their castle at the Twins are so significant is because they control strategic passage over one of the rivers). It's located between the North and the Crownlands with Kings Landing to the South, and to the west is the Westerlands, where the Lannisters has their gold mining empire. So it's quite often the area mainly destroyed by warfare in the kingdom. Arya also spent most of her travels in the Riverlands. The devastation of the area is also described in much more detail in book 2, I think, and it does make the whole campaign of Robb Stark more nuanced when you see the consequences for the common folk.

I've been really missing Joffrey this season.

^ Still my favorite parts of this show.

one thing bugging me is how casual and "oh yeah" everybody is about RESURRECTION, there's no way the Lannisters wouldn't have at least one full-time miracle-worker in case the king gets poisoned

Nah, Lannisters are quite anti-magic. Qyburn's science of semi-ressurection is a very new innovation.

oh boy

I actually think the resurrection stuff is some of my least favorite stuff in this show. If you need a character alive, then don't kill them. Zombie Mountain is still the Mountain, with little to no discernible change. Zombie Jon Snow is still Jon Snow, and if that's what it took to get him off the Wall, fine, but there were probably easier, less confusing, less convoluted ways. Especially since we are operating in a world with magic snow zombies already, why bother with all these one-off back-from-the-dead-ers?

I've started to enjoy watching the show try to juggle all its characters and subplots in a limited space of time/season. I think I'm also enjoying the more contemporary writing style this season has embraced, more like the first season (iirc), probably less successful at delivering us to another world but certainly fun/funny/goofy..

The Brans-splaining is a solid if hackneyed shortcut, though I've got to admit my wife is at a total loss at to what's going on. I'd been recently thinking of this show in terms of "Lord of the Rings," the movies, specifically the amount of stuff they squeeze into 11 hours of film, which is basically only one season of GoT. And yet GoT is struggling to reconcile Martin's vast convolutions of history (which are important) with telling the story, driving it forward. Tolkien's world is no less complex, but I doubt there were many moments in the films that made the armchair nerd ask "what the hell is going on?" But I can sense this show leaving behind anyone who has not done their homework, and even some who have read all the books as entertainment and not as text. As I think the AV Club review pointed out, all roads still seem to be leading to R+L=J, but the narrative machinations necessary to set that up are surprisingly complex and probably have to be revealed sooner rather than later. Which the show appears to be doing, but short a history lesson might be hard to convey.

Maybe we'll get a flashback to Jon's brain when he was dead where his ghost father will appear and tell him (us) what's going on? We're already getting pretty Star Wars-y with all the training, might as well go full force ghost.

Every time I see that green forest sprite I giggle btw.

So yeah, kind of important question that the writers are presumably gonna get round to at some point - who becomes king when Tommen inevitably gets whacked with no heir?

Margaery would be Queen, right?

After some late night visits to King Ser Pounce.