Deadlines? What Deadlines?

I understand completely. I was actually partly agreeing with you. "If the pink letter is true." We know (or can be fairly certain) the pink letter is at least a partial fabrication. We suspect that the pink letter is a complete fabrication and possibly not authored by who it claims to be. We can also be fairly certain that Stannis is still alive because of TWOW chapter that was released, unless that chapter takes place before the events at the end of ADWD. Did D&D say "Stannis burns Shireen" or "Shireen gets burned" in the books? That's not completely clear.

Yup. And yup.

1. There is no pink letter in the show. 2. attempting to tease out future plot lines in the books based on events in the show is a waste of time. I can't wait for next season when the material will be almost entirely new (depending on when twow is published).

Maybe he's not dead in the books. Maybe he burns her in the middle of the book and dies at the end. Seriously?

Except she did.

Right, because book Stannis is such a nice guy. The one that killed his brother, burned to death his brother-in-law, and was about to burn to death his nephew (Shireen's playmate) until Davos scuttled those plans.

There's a lot of really tedious chatter on these boards that HBO are doing it wrong because they leave out this or that or they tweak this or that or they include some stuff at the expense of of other stuff or whatever. There are even those that like to accuse the show runners of creating "fan fiction", or tiresome conversations about "He didn't say ghost". or whatever. All I have to say is, if that's the way you demand literary adaptations in cinema or TV are supposed to work, then be prepared for a lifetime of disappointment. As much as I would have like to have seen Jamie's sojourn through the river lands, (the biggest change IMO), I have no problem with the change they made and I understand why they made it. That's just about the biggest change I can think of this season. It might not be their best, but I enjoyed this season. Oh, and Benjen is not coming back. Get over it.

Fantastic episode. "Nice to see the end of the world is working out for someone."

Wun Wun don't need no stinking boat! Brilliant episode.

The scale is insufficient. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/06/Spinal_Tap_-_Up_to_Eleven.jpg

Nice.

Don't have Tyrion become the savior of KL only to have him fall from grace later. Don't have Cat say "We'll kill them all" in season 1 only have her life fall apart and cut her throat later. Don't have Robb kicking southron arse all over the river lands just to kill him off at a wedding. Don't make Oberyn a charismatic, likable kick ass character just to crush his skull. Don't capture Jamie Lannister just to cut him loose. Jesus, it's like unless a characters story is a continuous, uninterrupted, unidirectional progression, there's just "no way".

Huh, ASOIAF TV adaptation that subverts your expectations? Who ever heard of such a thing?

A sacrifice to the lord of light. "There is power in King's blood." Yeah, that's an awfully obvious thread to just leave hanging. That situation will come to a head soon I think.

Doing the Winterfell scenes anything like ADWD depicts would be an entire season unto itself. They are condensing an incredible amount of material into just ten hours of TV. I haven't agreed with all of their editorial decisions, but all in all, I'm enjoying the season. Snapping Theon out of his Reek persona needs to take time or it will seem incredibly contrived. Also, anything other than what we saw last night would have a segment of the fandom howling "See?!? Those bastards are torturing Sansa for the sake of Theon's character arc!!!" Theon is always going to be a figure of simultaneous sympathy and hatred. That reminds me: Mentioned this once before but I think it got lost in the flurry of comments last night. On the previous show thread there were several commenters that were making claims that Sansa's character would be so mishandled that within a few episodes she'd forget her wedding night trauma and by the end of the season she'd live "happily ever after". There were others who were screaming that they had in fact turned her into Jeyne and she's just there to develop Theon's character. After last night, does anyone think this is still the case?

While a lot of GOT actors have been recognized for their performances, Alfie Allen is consistently underrated as Theon/Reek IMO.

Pashernate Reader, on 24 May 2015 - 9:34 PM, said: There are a few obvious differences between Tyrion/Tysha and Sam/Gilly. Tysha was the "damsel in distress", Gilly was not exactly that. She's already experienced Crasters cruelty and seen Sam's courage. She even demands that he escape during the attack, he doesn't and gets beaten senseless for it. Tyrion and Tysha were strangers with almost zero history with each other. Sam saved Gilly during the mutiny at Crasters, they escaped south to the wall together, survived the wight attack and shared more than a few tender moments, including after the attack in this weeks episode. She has seen him kill for her. She knows he'd die for her. Oh, and if there was any doubt, it was established, like, at least 8 episodes ago that they are already in love with each other.

Y'know, I'm getting this funny feeling that coercion is an affirmative defense to perjury.

Maybe, but the High sparrow and the Faith Militant have demonstrated that they are humorless dicks when it comes to following the rules. Also, homophobia. That reminds me, the exchange between Olenna and the HS was fantastic.

One way or another, Sansa will not give birth to Ramsey's child.

That's awesome. He should move there.

To be clear, I'm not saying KL "toughened her up" or that she was prepared for Ramsey's brutality. I'm saying that prior to KL, she had little to no concept of the brutality of men or specifically the brutality of men against women. After KL, different story.

So, his gift is to convince Olyvar to admit to perjury after he's seen Marjery locked up for the same offense (at the same hearing)? That would spring Marg and Loras immediately, but I'd like to see how LF convinces him to do this.

Ramsey is a force of nature, taking pleasure primarily with dominating people through terror. If he was smart, he'd be kissing her feet, not keeping her locked in a room. Power politics is not his strong suit. The way they set it up in the show, it will be interesting to see how Roose reacts to the treatment of Sansa. In the books, he's somewhat indifferent, but in the books it's the northern lords that bend to him. In the show, he's genuinely worried about them uniting against him. Rumors of Ramsey brutalizing the last daughter of Eddard Stark could see the marriage of political convenience backfire spectacularly.