Eegah

I just rewatched the first film, specifically trying to think about what I would make of it if I had seen it on its original release as a standalone work, with no familiarity with the character (I managed to watch the second and third films as a kid before going back to it). And what really stood out to me is that Rocky comes off as quite a pushy jerk for the whole first half. He acts like his generosity in giving Adrian the time of day entitles him to sex with her (the scene where he complains to Paulie that his lame jokes haven't gotten him anything from her would undoubtedly include the word "friendzone" if it was written today), he has no problem with Paulie throwing her turkey into the alley and bullying her into going on a date, he spends that whole date yammering on and on about himself while hardly seeming to care if Adrian has anything to add to the conversation, and finally he absolutely refuses to take no for an answer when Adrian doesn't want to come up to his apartment. Luckily he improves after that point, and you can probably chalk a lot of this up to different standards in the '70s (though it's undoubtedly to me a good thing that this has changed).

My own take on this is one that I'm surprised doesn't come up that often: if he is Benjen, why would Martin even try to make a mystery of it when that's by far the most obvious solution? Remember when The Walking Dead suddenly decided to make a mystery out of Daryl's pre-rising life only to reveal it was exactly what everyone had assumed beforehand? This would be the same thing. Compare this to the Sandor as gravedigger theory, which actually is subtle enough that I could buy it being meant as a surprise before the online think tanks got to it.

I heard somewhere that Martin stated the hips are just a continuity error, but I definitely don't trust him to not just pull a Lindeloff on us at this point.

The best way I've ever seen it put is, the books refuse to cheat to let the heroes win, but the show cheats to let the VILLAINS win. They should consider just turning things over to the Once Upon a Time guys and get it over with.

Mostly I just have to laugh that the writers were so desperate to give us a seemingly damning piece of evidence against Simon before explaining the truth that they gave him the same sense of international politics your average five year old has, that this one gesture would magically create world peace for all time. Mostly I got the impression that he read Watchmen way too much as a kid.

After that scene in Season 4 where Rorge and Biter randomly show up to be killed by Arya and Sandor, a lot of book fans were understandably confused, thinking it would make Brienne's story even more plotless. Which...yeah, that's pretty much how it ended up.

The Elder Brother is now the popular choice for the role that Ian McShane is playing, after his vague hint about it. I was hoping for Randyll Tarly myself, but I can also see this.

With the news that the sequel to the 2015 Fantastic Four movie is dead, I have one rather crazy idea for how to incorporate them into the MCU: make Reed Richards a villain. Just play completely into his very earliest characterization as a sexist, abusive asshole that fans typically write off with "Hey, it was the '60s," plus his gleefully signing up to throw all his friends into the Phantom Zone during Civil War, and let him get the punishment for that stuff that people have wanted to see for decades.

Matt is the ONLY hero in the MCU so far who actually bothers with a secret identity, right? Which made it pretty amusing that it took him until the end of his first season to actually pick up an official superhero name. This show found a nice counterbalance for that; if Jessica was going to be a hero, she'd just do it as herself, and people can either get behind that or not, she doesn't care. Her turning down Claire's offer to call in Daredevil got me thinking: given that Matt's abilities are dependent on his own senses, would Kilgrave have gotten any more out of him than any normal person? His fighting skills, yeah, but that's about it, I think. And of course, there's the fact that he's immune to Kilgrave's powers in the comics.

I'm coincidentally also rewatching Agent Carter at the moment, and it hit me that IGH could well be the current version of Leviathan. Ivchenko's powers very much seem like a prototype for Kilgrave's, and it seems pretty likely that after losing him the rest of Leviathan would try to replicate it, and took a few decades before the Thompsons' attempt to save their son triggered it accidentally.

I really wish they'd just let Lord be a good guy on this show. For those not aware, At least the rest of the show is so good that I'm willing to see where it's going with this.

The change in Arya's fake name is another of those weird bits where it's minor enough that it's not really worth getting upset over, but at the same time you have to wonder what the hell the point was. Though after all that stuff about how they had to change Asha's name or everyone would think she was Osha, I'm dying to find out if the Season 5 commentaries will have some writer or director saying they didn't want us to think Arya was being possessed by her mother or something.

Luke is the subject of the third Netflix show, but he was also a major love interest to Jessica in the comics so it makes a lot of sense to introduce him here. Also, his first girlfriend when his series started was none other than Claire Temple.

I may be completely alone in this, but until Season 5 replaced the Kindly Man with Jaqen, I was really pulling for him to be played by Tim Curry. And I still hear Curry's voice on his lines.

And of course, deciding to split his original book four by region just happened to largely put the less interesting characters into the first half.

Martin has admitted that Darkstar was his attempt to deliberately create an "ensemble darkhorse" as TV Trope puts it, ie a character who's tremendously popular despite limited page/screen time, after he was so surprised at how huge the response to Oberyn was. What he ended up with was all the proof you need that you simply can't force that kind of thing, and anyone who tries will just end up looking silly.

Let's all recognize the real victim in all this, the rat that was living on Scarlett's head. Where's he supposed to go now?

I remember there were quite a few book fans worried when UnCat didn't come at the end of Season 3 that they would make Talisa even more of an absurd Mary Sue by having her be the one resurrected instead. I still kind of think that would be a hilarious "Fuck you."

In the commentary for the Season 4 finale, the director makes this really weird comment about how "everyone knows" what really went down with Tysha, so they decided not to waste time spelling it out, which just sounds like they've decided to completely leave the Unsullied in the lurch as we're now supposed to just understand the backstory from the books when it comes up again without being properly set up in the show.

Alex Graves (ie the guy who turned Jaime and Cersei's sex scene into a rape and then was utterly baffled at how anyone could have gotten that impression) stated after the Season 4 finale that including UnCat would have been "a waste" because you'd have a great actress like Michelle Fairley just standing around unable to talk while the rest of the Brotherhood does stuff for her. The fans' reaction was...predictable.

And let's not forget the show's RW providing the crowning achievement of Robb's flaming idiocy, where he doesn't see how it could be any kind of problem at all to parade his new wife in front of the Freys and basically say "Here's the pair of tits I screwed you over for." (Because let's face it, as written that's all their relationship is).

There's also the way they had the chutzpah to put all the fans' problems with her in the mouth of Walder Frey, thus giving us the message that they equated anyone who didn't like her with him. The manner of her death also really struck me as emotional blackmail, to make it harder to talk about not liking her without looking like an asshole.

I fully support most of the changes to Cersei. The one thing that really gets on my nerves, though, is that especially during the first couple seasons, Lena Headey had this bad habit of condescendingly lecturing the fans that they were being way too hard on her character, AT THE SAME TIME that she was proudly saying she'd never read the books. Which means she had no fucking clue what she was actually talking about.

Going back a bit as I missed when it first came up but can't resist telling this story: I watched the episode with Missandei's big nude scene with a friend who hasn't read the books. And when he audibly gasped and then was pretty clearly lusting after her, I turned to him with the biggest evil grin I could muster and said "She's ten years old in the books. Have fun with that."

And the people who guessed Simmons was sent to Guardians-land (including me, toot toot) are the winners. Of course, I'm not expecting any of the Guardians themselves to show, up, but it would be nice to see a minor character or two from the area before she comes home. Maybe her arrival got the Nova Corps' attention. I'm so impressed that not only do we have a gay character on the show, but it's far from the only thing that defines his personality and was introduced in such a casual way, just like the captain from The Flash.