honeyed chicken

Welcome! As a Norwegian-American, I'm always happy to have more Scandinavians around. I have forum friends from Denmark and Sweden, and there was a previous Finn I seem to recall, but he hasn't been seen in some time.

Charles Dance's performance in GOT is a tour de force (not sure I'm qualified to use that phrase, but it seems appropriate). Book Tywin doesn't get enough page time to be as impressive as Dance. He's more of a foil for his kids.

Completely agree with you about Storm of Swords. It's brilliant. As I've said, I'm slowly rereading AFFC for the 3rd or 4rth time (lost track). I finished ASOS right before - and it seems to gain in power each time. meant to quote your previous post; "I can't wait to read the third book because I read that Jaime will become a POV character then. I'm a bit scared though that maybe I won't like him anymore once I actually see his point of you and maybe realise that his way of thinking doesn't match the way I had imagined... and that I've only been whitewashing him because I like him. Still, there are many characters that I enjoy and that I'm looking forward to. :)" Imo, Jamie's POVs are really good to great. I can only speak for myself, but I find Jamie's character gaining depth and interest as the story goes along.

Welcome SerArthurHeath! Congrats on passing your medical exams!

You have come to the right place - welcome!

Good. I'm the same kind of reader. That allows me to enjoy the rereads even more. I'm reading the fourth book, AFFC (A Feast for Crows) for the third or fourth time presently and enjoying it more than ever.

Hi Eirlys! You'll find there are Jaime fans among us - even passionate ones, like my (our) friend, Dreamsongs. I started out on the fence about Jamie, but he grows on me with each book. I love his journey. ASOIAF is often praised for its realism and Jaimie's journey throughout the books is about as real as it gets and fascinating to boot. If you don't like to have the surprises in the book spoiled, I recommend you be careful where you go on Westeros. Almost all of Westeros except for the Still Reading Forum/A Game of Thrones (here: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/forum/50-a-game-of-thrones/ ) may contain spoilers for you. Most posters try to be careful, but in certain forums you need to be able to assume the other posters have read everything. Anyway, you probably have figured this out - I just don't want to see the books ruined for you.

And you have been a very good Spam King, Your Grace. As for not talking about the race, part of that is that the board mods prefer it that way till post 950. Instead, when the post #'s get up into the high 800's and low 900's the spammers make veiled references to it, like "not too long now...", "just 33 more posts till you know what!", "Here comes the "R" word!" It's pretty funny to me. Completely agree about the friends. Speaking of which I need to go thank everybody, including you for the kind anniversary wishes. :)

Hi Erinn! I notice you plan to go to ConCarolinas and though I won't be going I know several people from the board who plan to go. You can find them at TTTNE, here: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/110535-tttne-428-the-rhaenysbalerion-appreciation-thread/page-17 Hi Amber! Nice story. :) I hope you find a kindred spirit or two. For all of you, this is a nice place on the board to meet friendly people: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/110535-tttne-428-the-rhaenysbalerion-appreciation-thread/ Here's an intro I wrote about The Thread That Never Ends: What is TTTNE? You could call The Thread That Never Ends a loooonng slow chat – with the goal of being poster #1,000. Posts on TTTNE are referred to in the aggregate as “spam” and posting as “spamming” and those who do it as “spammers”. So the spam is a race within a chat and at the same time it is a community. We support each other through the bad times and cheer when something good happens (we tend to use lots of emoticons). We are all kinds of ages from 12 to 88. Single, married without kids, married with kid or kids – the whole gamut. We get to know each other’s families and even pets – for those that wish to share. Others choose not to talk about their personal lives and that’s fine as well. There’s talk about TV shows, movies, books. Some about broken hearts and other aggravations. Bad day at work? You will almost always find someone to commiserate with you at TTTNE. There’s even a secret Santa – while that is a separate thread and you don’t have to be a spammer to join, it does tend to be mostly spammers. TTTNE is not a place for politics, religion or divisive social issues – there’s GenChat for that. The race rules are these (as laid down by the moderators of the board): Spam from post 1 to 950 should have meaningful content, whether in response to someone else’s post or as a statement of your own. From post 950 - 1000, special rules apply so that "GO!GO!GO!" is an acceptable post. If you are lucky #1,000, you get to pick the theme for and start the next thread. The race happens with whoever is around at that point which given that we have posters from New Zealand, Australia, India, Dubai, throughout Europe and on across North America to Oregon, you can get some pretty interesting times of day for these things. You can be around TTTNE for months and not see the race. So it's a lot of fun to get in one and winning is a blast. Other than that, be respectful, and have fun. :)

Hi Mari, there are plenty of us cat obsessives around here! :) There are allegedly many TV related threads around if you're interested. Hi KT! Nice to bump into you outside of TTTNE! ;) I can certainly see how an interest in history would lead you to Westeros.org. If you don't find any history threads you could start one and you'll probably find plenty of others like you. (I like English history but know little).

Agreed. I've been pretty critical, I confess (and will continue to be). However, in this episode I liked the changes they made for the most part and in some cases I think they've even improved over the books. I didn't like Talisa at first, but they've carefully built up her relationship with Robb, which will pay dividends.