Homer Lannister

What I find really funny, is that Talisa's death didn't hit me as hard as D & D would have probably wanted. I said this before but I just wanted to reiterate, having someone butcher a pregnant woman or (cut and paste any other equally gruesome activity) is NOT enough to make me sympathize with them. The character is meant to be written properly so that when they finally bite it, we actually feel something. For This season Talisa has been one of the more irritating aspects for me and has just wrinkled pretty much every scene she's in. What I find funnier is that the book RW didn't have any scene quite as gruesome as a pregnant woman being stabbed half a hundred times, yet it still hit you like a whirlwind, just the brutal efficiency of the whole thing. But in the show you have the writers basically saying,"oh please feel sorry for these characters, look how gruesomely we kill them off!!!" But personally I feel like they need to learn how to write a better character first, and then come and tell me to feel sorry for them.

While I'll admit that it was a good episode overall, I still feel that show RW was not even half of the quality of the book RW. As a wise man (from Looper I might add) once said, "It's the little ones that get you" This to me was the case with this episode and pretty much this entire season. Many people (myself included) have been babbling on and on about a few little things that we knew would soften the impact of the Red wedding and thus weaken this season overall. E.g. Robb's apparent battle retardedness in wanting to take CASTERLY FUCKING ROCK instead of his retaking his seat of power at Winterfell, the lack of ANY northern bannermen (this one annoys me the most), Catlyn's screen time being reduced, the karstarks having HALF of Robbs fucking army, lack of Greywind, Thugfish & most of all the poorly adapted robb-talisa love story. About the lack of northern bannermen, IMHO it completely ruined the fact that the Freys killed practically the entire north, that was a huge minus for me in the sympathy department. Instead we get 20 random and nameless mu'fuckers being butchered at the wedding. Who were these people? and why were they allowed to attend the wedding? I guess they were bannermen of some sorts, but they seemed of about as much importance as sock puppets. Plus the Talisa stabbing had no impact on me whatsoever, D & D think only brute violence or gruesomeness can make you sympathize with a dying character, but the power of the original material was in establishing the characters properly and MAKING you love them before tearing them down. I had no strong feelings for either Talisa or Robb due to D & D's ponderous writing. There were quite a few other little niggles, e.g. the exceptional sellsword musicians, the lack of the 'mentally challenged' frey, no drums, no grey wind going apeshit, the shooting of catelyn, etc. I suspect most of this would not matter to non-book readers and it'll be a shock to them nonetheless, but from a book readers perspective I think ultimately that D & D failed to live up to the hype of the original RW and also failed to deliver on their 'series defining' moment. The original RW was and still is the most shocking and tragic thing to happen in ASOIAF, but in the show (for me at least) it didn't generate as much sympathy as the ned stark death. I have enjoyed this season thus far but the more they make strange and often unnecessary departures from the book (particularly a storm of swords which is the best in the franchise) the more it weakens the show overall. IMHO they can start making crazy changes when they hit books 4 & 5 which are in dire need of some form of change as they are pretty week compared to the first 3 books. Like I said before, "It's the little things that get you". Also I'd like to compare these little changes to butterfly wings flapping, slowly and discreetly at first but then building up to a disaster later on.