Balefont

Then why wouldn't Luwin have told them to join those supposed allies rather than flee to the Wall?

Why not?

Loved the episode. Totally blown away. So well acted and I was totally surprised by the three-blasts scene. I even didn't mind the scene with Ros. To all the h8rs due to the clipped HotU scenes - do you not realize how difficult it would be to convey all those visions to the non-book reading viewers and how much of the episode would be needed to do so? Come on. The Rheagar scene with the harp would be cool but so out of place for the show. It would be costly due to casting and would not add anything to the show-story. Non of the non-book reading viewers know what Rheager looks like nor his true import to the story. It's really too bad you're all so hung up on this shit that you can't even enjoy the show at all. Please stop watching, you're only causing yourselves pain. :P

Rains of Castamere!

Loras!!!!

Maybe George's point is that shipping San San is not truly part of the story. < smirk >

Sing me a song, little bird.

Oh snap @ the Hound

Holy shit, this episode is fucking awesome.

Makes for better TV, imo.

I disagree. I'm on Team Natalie Dormer. If they waited until after she heard the boys were dead, Karstark's argument would have been hugely deflated because Cat would have the upper hand in the morality debate.

< dons flame retardant suit > < discards flame retardant suit because ninja don't need that shit > I like the guy playing The Mountain in this episode. He may not be as physically "huge" but his voice was great and his face is way more like I pictured him in my head. Plus, I didn't get the sense that he is prone to "over-acting" like the first Mountain gave me.

I liked the pacing of this episode.

Yep, my second read through (of seven) I actually like the character of Jhn less. He seemed an angsty, whiny teen to me.

Howdy, FTR, I don't mind the changes and I think many characters and story lines have been deftly merged and pruned to retain essential story lines and characterization. That said, the Ros scenes do not provide backdrop for anything important. The scenes are redundant if their purpose is to show us more about the character with whom she is 'interacting'. And she is no Natalie Dormer. :P

Ros serves no purpose but hamfisted redundancy and, no, I will not get over it. I enjoyed the episode. Almost as good as the last one. I still need to watch it a few times to let it all sink in.

Stannis is one of the major characters in the whole story and particularly in Clash and I just feel they totally missed the boat with the TV version. I'm curious to see how it gets "fixed" but so far the character is complexity flat and non-threatening.

While technically true this is not a strong move for a king to do it for his own bastard. It wrecks havoc in the lines of succession. Again, as someone stated before, Stannis is such an honorable prude TV Mel's flimsy attempts to sway him in such a way at such an early stage in the game would have been met with disgust rather than lust. Robert was the weak man who fathered bastards.

He's supposed to be the brittle iron (Robert was the 'true steel') but the TV Stannis is ineffectual pewter.

I miss the mod knee pads already. :bawl:

:D Let the addiction begin... :evil:

I'll add my take on Kay's writing is that he writes beauty. He captures beauty well (and not in that all his characters are described as beautiful). When distilling the written language down to the one word I feel best describes Kay, the word is: Art. That said, I enjoyed Tigana and Arbonne. I couldn't put down Last Light of the Sun. Yet, Lions of Al-Rassan is hands down my favorite Kay novel. Read it twice, even. I'm, coincindentaly, reading Fionovar and am about to finish book two. I'm not a big fan of "Dark Lord Fantasy" but it's holding my interest and I'm a sucker for finishing books/series.