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Julie, give us a wedding report (in the thread where you discussed your wedding)!</p>
<p>CTTC - Will do.</p>
<p>Also, apparently I incorrectly reported what happens in the book. He breaks the dagger stabbing something else.</p>
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<p>hyperJulie, I find that there aren’t that many awkward scenes, but without fail if I am watching alone as I usually do, as soon as an awkward scene pops up the whole family just happens to show up. They probably think that is what the whole show is about.</p>
<p>Just catching up to this thread having binge-watched this with my HS son, following his last final. </p>
<p>I didn’t know about the “awkward scene” aspect, but I discovered GOT spawned the term “sexposition” for it exposition of the story line and back stories during them. When an awkward scene comes on, I say to my son, close your eyes, and he said to me: You mean it’s ok though that I watch it when they cut off a head? Sorta. </p>
<p>I had a prof who argued media should show violence but not sex, reasoning that we should work out our violent impulses only in fantasy, but learn sexual health through living it.</p>
<p>Bumping because I have just started the series ( both the books & the first season) & because even though I don’t have HBO I know that the 4th season is starting soon.</p>
<p>I’m going to try and take the series slower than I have so far ( watched the first season over the weekend), but he better quit futzing around with Hollywood & write!</p>
<p>I am so happy that I didn’t discover the series until shortly before he wrote the last book. Earlier I said I couldn’t watch it, but since then I have watched everything except the middle of the first episode. Knowing what happened was enough.</p>
<p>My thoughts on casting: love Peter Dinklage and Iain Glenn, but both are far too good-looking for the characters in the books. The opposite problem with Cersei. Obviously, some of the characters are older, notably Robb and Jon. Major upgrades in characters include Ygritte and Robb Stark’s wife, who was a pretty little nothing in the book, which made is act in marrying her distressingly immature and stupid. The TV version is a person of substance.</p>
<p>I am EXTREMELY unhappy with what happens at the end of the last book. Actually, that’s an understatement.</p>
<p>I just watched the season finale and have a burning need to talk about it with SOMEONE! :)</p>
<p>Anyone else struck by the elimination of the Tysha revelation?</p>
<p>^I thought that was a big miss. Also, very disappointed with Jojen’s death. </p>
<p>The absence of the Tysha story is going to change Tyrion’s motivation for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>It has been a while, but did Jojen die in the books? I thought he didn’t…</p>
<p>He didn’t. And there are a lot of unconfirmed theories that require Jojen to be alive (see Jojen-paste); its unclear how this episode affects those theories.</p>
<p>@Consolation - a suggestion - if you haven’t read the Hedge Knight trilogy of short stories by GRRM yet, go do that ASAP :)</p>
<p>Let me know if you have trouble finding them.</p>
<p>Spoiler Warning for non book readers:</p>
<p>Consolation - I was surprised by the elimination of the Tysha story too. But then one of my friends suggested an alternative theory: he thinks that Cersei told Jamie to release Tyrion and set him up to find Shae in the father’s bed on the HOPE that Tyrion would kill Tywin. </p>
<p>It would explain why the show bothered to set up Cersei’s threats against her father and reunion with Jamie. Perhaps more importantly, once Tyrion finds out (presumably from Varys) what happened, it would give him comparable reason to hate Jamie, with Shae replacing Tysha as the motivating factor.</p>
<p>The only reason I hate this theory is because it butchers Jamie’s character arc once again.</p>
<p>^Possibly, although it seems much more likely that Varys set up Tyrion. Your theory is certainly more consistent with the tv show though.</p>
<p>I don’t think Tyrion is ever going to hate Jaime. Certainly not over Shae. I think that theory is too far-fetched. :)</p>
<p>Another departure from the books is that Cersei has become a much more sympathetic character, which affects Jaime. In the books, Jaime’s growing disenchantment with Cersei is wholly justified, and part of his growth. In the TV version, she is a much more nuanced character, who has clearly been ill-used by almost everyone. If he repudiates her, he will become the latest in a line of men who have used and abused her and turned her into what she is. In the TV version, only her unreasoning hatred of Tyrion is wholly her fault.</p>
<p>One deviation from the books that I did enjoy was the fight between Brienne and the Hound. To me, I found the Hound much more sympathetic in the TV show than in the books (where I found him mostly pathetic at the end). I actually didn’t know whom I should be rooting for in that fight, the noble lady who always seemed to fail to live up to her oaths to others, or the redeemed protector / father figure the Hound slowly became for Arya at the end. It was also without a doubt one of the most honestly brutal “fights between knights” I’ve ever seen portrayed. </p>
<p>I wonder if the Hound is really dead.</p>
<p>A Lady Stoneheart appearance would have been nice</p>
<p>^Well, we didn’t see him die. Sort of like Syrio Forel.</p>
<p>I’d say that Syrio is unlikely to reappear. Certainly it hasn’t happened in the books. The Hound on the other hand…</p>
<p>I’m sort of figuring that the TV people are in the know about what GRRM plans to do with the characters, so that when they do something like kill Jojen they aren’t committing a huge plot gaffe. If memory serves, they also did away with Pretty Pig and the dog at Joffrey’s feast, which changes things somewhat down the road. But I can see that being very difficult to duplicate IRL.</p>
<p>I could do without Lady Stoneheart, myself. :)</p>
<p>There was one book, or part of a book, where you are left wondering if Arya is dead but it was just a George RR Martin cliffhanger ending (the Hound hits her in the head with his axe outside the Twins to prevent her from running in to the Red Wedding but he phrases it like, “his axe found her” or something like that). He did write for television once! </p>
<p>While I believe that Syrio Forel is dead, I’m not so sure about the Hound, just as I’m not so sure about a certain event near the end of A Dance with Dragons. </p>