FantasyFan73

^^^ i was talking about my time at school- my degree at university was in mathematics :) But yes we read dickens, a translation of quixote, shakespeare and c.s.lewis etc at school.

I just took a peek at the top ten selling books of all time, and was surprised to find i read most of them at school as part of the curriculum - unsurprisingly the only ones in the top ten we were not required to read were the two fantasy books. So yes i would say the true classics dont disappear over time.

I couldnt stand true blood, but i dont think a show needs 'amazing indepth' storylines to be good fun. Rome was not particularly well written, but it was very enjoyable indeed after a slow first episode.

I should add, i dont care how an expert rates the 'greatness' of a book, as i understand it C.S.Lewis put tolkien forward for a nobel prize and the judges were unimpressed. I couldnt care less, to me a great book is one that sucks people in, and successfully affects their emotions. Martin has managed to do that in his first 3 books, and so did LOTR (which i read 5 times but havent read for ten years)

And yet fantasy has wide appeal In 2003 the bbc did a survey asking people what their favourite book was The winner was Lord of the Rings

I dont understand the aggression from so many people i must admit. Different people like different things, it doesnt mean 1 is right and the other person is wrong. Personally i loved every season before this, but havent loved S5 i still enjoyed it but the quality doesnt compare to s1 to s3 in particular for me , but then i thought book 4 was mediocre and felt book 5 was tedious. However if people loved S5, fair play to them :) And if people think books 4 and 5 were amazing, again fair play to them :) In conclusion i think maybe it is best to view them separately and not view it as some sort of competition?

I dont know how anyone can like the sansa/ramsey arc It consists of Reek: Over the top conflicted face Ramsey: Over the top cartoon villian face Sansa: Over the top broken face Repeated multiple times.... Best for me has been the wall POV this season, mireen has been ok but not great, same with kings landing, dorne has been comical but not in a good way

^^^^ I still think GOT is better than most things on TV to be honest, its purely that the 'shock' scenes feel contrived and gratuitous for me- plus theres no way around the fact dorne is crap. The scenes with the sandsnakes have me cringing a lot of the time. It wasnt the bad pussy line that made me wince most it was seeing 'deadly serious' dialogue delivered over a game of patta cake. Hated the way they got rid of barristan too, i loved that character. I dont think for a minute that intelligence is anything to do with enjoying 'travelogues' or enjoying action though. And surely the idea of consuming media is entertainment? I love good dialogue, but dont want long winded descriptions of food etc on the written page, i want things to happen (personal preference of course)...more importantly you cant translate that stuff to film. I am still holding out for an improved S6 though so i will keep watching

I am doing a rewatch at the moment (ill do a reread at some point too) and there are some brilliant moments, i will say the robb stark story was better on the show than books for me The king of the north scene worked for me, and robs grief when he is chopping the tree and speaks to cat REALLY worked for me Here is hoping that S6 produces moments like that in bucketfuls.

I agree, it was a case of 'get to shocking scene no matter how contrived and jarring it is' for me. If we had some build up then maybe it would have worked, but instead we had time devoted to crap about sand snakes flashing breasts and playing some daft slapping game. The earlier seasons had stuff i loved (arya and the hound, robert and cersei discussing their marriage, walder frey trolling rob etc) This season i loved... hard home.

And thats the problem, they drive characters to do 'the worst thing you can imagine' even when it makes no sense this season. I am convinced it is purely to get the media reporting on it the next day, but in some cases it spoils characterization

The most annoying thing for me about the battle was ramsay, i thought the depiction of overwhelming forces closing in was ...ok (although where the heck did they get tonnes of knights from). Ramsay is...cartoon like for me right now though. And we havent seen the hostility of the north to the boltons depicted at all? I think they have squandered sansas arc, i previously had a feeling she would 'grow'... and now she is permanently stuck in the role of helpless victim? Killing kevan would NOT have affected show watchers in the slightest, most show watchers would barely know who he is, heck i had to explain to my OH why trant was on aryas list....as it had been a while, kevan has had almost no screen time FTW.....i didnt like how they made thorne a more complex character, then ripped that up, but hey ho but apart from that it was ok Walk of shame, i felt was well done, but a bit long as so much to cover!.