Mack Kilimaro

This episode gets a 9/10 almost entirely on the strength of Tyrion finally meeting Daenerys. I think we've all been waiting for that for a damn long time.

10/10, not exactly perfect, but if all those scenes that are more or less right word for word from ASOS, and happened to be hit out of the park in the show, don't sway you, then I don't think anything ever will. Bronn's visit to Tyrion, Oberyn's visit to Tyrion, Sansa's snow castle... and then, just for fun, Hot Pie.

Stunned by the number of people who think there was any serious amount of sincerity in anything that Hizdahr said. I doubt if his father spoke out against the stuff he said at all. He's just coming in with a sob story because he's probably heard that the new queen always buys sob stories. We saw that with the goatherd. Great episode. I really liked the way they translated the trial scene into the show. It lost some things but preserved the key essence, while adding others, like Margaery's reactions to the proceedings, knowing what we know about her insight into the truth of the matter.

10/10. I don't even know what else to say right now. That far exceeded my expectations of what they'd be able to pull off for that battle. Amazing.

You want to stick to the book and this is your favorite episode so far? That is some serious cognitive dissonance. Last week, the different plots really felt like they connected better, thematically. I thought it was rather disjointed this week, and some of the scenes that were added... ugh. Is the surgeon we met tonight really going to be what takes the place of Jeyne Westerling? That's gonna be a hot mess. OTOH, I thought Joffrey with the whores was a disturbingly well done scene. A friend felt it was unnecessary because Joffrey's nature has already been shown, but I think it's one thing to suspect how much of a creep he is based on his boisterous actions in front of a crowd... it's another thing to see that he's 16 and he'd rather get one whore to beat up another than get a BJ. I mean, damn.

I just wanted to highlight this comment because it's something that made me smile about the episode, too. One of the things that I think is great about the book with Tyrion is that you get that image so soon after you meet him. It was a nice nod to put it in there, even if it didn't make it into his earliest scenes.

I feel like this is one of the best eps of the show so far. There were plenty of conversations nearly verbatim from the books and I thought that the new material was worked in great. It seems like nobody who's read the books likes TV show Shae. I am in this camp too. I don't know what they are doing with her. That was about the only thing going wrong tonight. The stuff with Margaery is different from the books but I think it works in the context of the show. As others have mentioned, the book reader can see the Queen of Thorns' influence there, and I think that's fine. Pragmatic to the core. You can see how she might be able to easily pivot to an alliance with the Lannisters, when it's clear they are ascendant ... yet ready to stick the knife in their backs as soon as they present it, too.

I don't think it matters which you read first in terms of plot comprehension. There's not any connection between the two stories at all, other than that they are in the same world. I like them both, though I think I like Lions a bit more.

Sis, one of the themes that runs through the books in the shared world of Lions, Sarantine and Last Light is the inevitable fading of mysticism in the face of the march of history. The fires of what they call the half-world in Sarantine are the same sort of thing as Crispin encounters on the way to Sarantium, these primitive pagan spirits that the Jaddites would like to snuff out. The theme is a lot more explicit in Last Light, where the faerie world can only endure because it's at the far end of the Jaddite sphere of influence; not only does the monotheism battle this pagan stuff, but technology sounds its death knell as well. It doesn't have a lot of point in and of itself, just that it was once there and in the future it's not. With respect to Sarantine...

That's because everybody recognized Matrim Fox Cauthon and the hammer-and-sickle Firefox - nobody knows High Priest Zadok! You gotta build up your new brand.

The fact that Ran has -180 reputation points says a lot about how seriously people are taking the whole system. Seeing how Ran is on the list of two boarders who get thanked by their real name in the acknowledgements section of A Feast for Crows and all. Some people probably use that as an argument to trash it, but that's my reason for keeping it. It's whimsical, silly meta that's ultimately harmless and occasionally rather amusing. The same kind of thing that people have come up with on their own over the years of this forum. I don't really look at it any differently than "profile view wars" or any other number of silly things that have been posted on the board over the years that were inspired by chat board antics or some RL gathering or whatever else. The difference being here, I suppose, that the rating system was just dumped into our laps rather than growing out of an inside joke between some boarders and some people aren't quite sure what to make of it. Embrace the fact that it doesn't matter. Be at peace with the knowledge that if you post stating your desire to accumulate a positive reputation, you will get negative reputation points. Accept that if you post stating your wish to join Ran in Evil Incarnate land, you will get positive reputation points. Understand that making a post asking why you got negative reputation points is akin to asking to receive further negative reputation points. Maybe you have some negative reputation stalker, who smolders with generic rage and follows you from thread to thread giving you negative reputation points. You may even have a clique of negative reputation stalkers: take heart in the fact that some group of people have nothing better to do with their lives than nerd rage at you by putting -1 on every post of yours they can find. I, for one, would feel better about my own life if this was the case. Maybe you let your temper get the best of you for one post and you said something abrasive and people didn't like it. Maybe you meant to be abrasive and you can thus revel in your moment as an iconoclast. Maybe somebody meant to hit positive and they hit negative instead. Most likely it's completely disconnected from any reality that we human beings are capable of comprehending. It's also possible that nobody likes you, so maybe you should just take the hint and go away. That said, there are going to be those rare times where there is some rational basis for a person, or a group of people, to offer either positive or negative votes. I think when an individual comes into a thread and nags about a grammatical pet peeve, then calls the OP and anyone else who uses this improper grammatical structure ignorant (which, as it happens, includes myself and everyone I know), then it shouldn't be a shock when some negative reaction to that commentary is expressed via the rating system, nor should it be especially surprising when the disbelief over the proliferation of those negative ratings becomes the subject of a new thread and some people choose to continue to express their disapproval of the entire situation. This is probably better than a flame war that derails the thread or gets the thread closed, or both. I would also argue that it's better than if the comment is completely ignored and receives no response whatsoever, but this is certainly a point where reasonable people can disagree, so I sure won't shed any tears if it goes away entirely either. The board's gone along fine without it before: that's fair. Hey, it was worth a try. I do like the idea of removing the aggregate reputation of all posts by a particular boarder. That's a great suggestion. I would hope that would make it a lot more palatable for people, if there is no "permanent record". Then the new feature can realize its true destiny, which is probably to receive 98% of its use in Forum Games.