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Could you give some coaching to GRRM's editor for Winds of Winter? Help him/her cut out 50-60 pages of food porn.

The description of Rugen that the chief undergaoler gives Jaime matches how Varys was dressed the night Tyrion escaped, so I think we were supposed to infer that they are the same person. Jaime pretty much did. One important bit from the Jaime chapter was we got to hear him perseverate:. "She's been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know..." Also, I liked how he demonstrated some wit by having Mace Tyrell go off to take Storm's End. Maybe Jaime wouldn't make that bad of a Hand after all....

Shimpy is past all the "evidence" for the poison speculation, so I don't think it needs to be spoiler tagged. It's one of the wilder theories out there. It's basically: 1. Tywin had breakfast with Oberyn 2. Tywin was on the privy when Tyrion killed him 3. Tywin's body decayed in an unexpected fashion. Counter arguments are: 1. The breakfast occurred before Joffrey's wedding, so the time between alleged poisoning and alleged onset of symptoms is pretty long. 2. People do that as part of their normal lives. Tyrion even thinks to himself (after killing Shae) that he knows where his father is, so it could be that Tywin routinely takes a bathroom break before he goes to bed. 3. What sort of poison has continuing effects after the victim has died? I suppose "magic" answers those objections, and Qyburn did say that Oberyn might have used a spell to delay the effects of the manticore venom on the Mountain. Theoretically Oberyn could have used some time-delayed poison, hoping that he'd be well away from Kings Landing by the time Tywin croaked. I just don't buy it. It's stringing together some unrelated bits of info into a convoluted plot. As Signmund Freud said, "sometimes a rotting corpse is just a rotting corpse," or words to that effect.

Jack Kerouac - excellent catch! That had to be intentional, so my earlier speculation about the picture being the wrong age due to production error / laziness is out the window.

AFFC spoiler

I agree somewhat with that part you quoted from that essay, but I approached the chapter as occurring in medias res, which I usually like. I'm asking "who the hell is this and what are they talking about?" but it got me intrigued instead of annoyed. YMMV. Completely agree with that.

I get what you're saying. I guess I was just put off by the lack of urgency in this whole story line. Simmons sits on it for a week before mentioning it, then this episode none of the rest of the team seem to care, except for Hunter and his crass comments about the competition.

I noticed that too but just took it for a cheap production error, but you might be on to something there. It could be a clue that Will is not Will. Or the planet is actually from Star Trek 8 where no one ages. Or the producers think the audience is too stupid to recognize a de-aged photo of the actor.

Andrew Lash, good calls everyone. I'm pretty sympathetic to the ATCU's storage facility, if one condition applies: did the people in the boxes consent to it? I could definitely see the less-human looking Inhumans, or the ones with debilitating abilities saying "yes please" if it gives them a chance to return to their normal lives. Also, "we're very close to a cure" sounds suspiciously like the plot from X3, if ATCU weaponizes the cure. Regarding the "we'll get Will back" plot: I wanted to punch Hunter in the throat for his fly-the-ex-in-from-Phoenix analogy. I mean, really? Not even remotely the same situation you callous bastard. A man has been trapped on another planet for 14 years and you're suggesting that they don't try to rescue him? Fuck off. Sadly, the "fuck off" above should be directed at the writers, because Simmons also had a similar reaction, thinking that Fitz would be uncomfortable with trying to rescue the guy because she developed feelings for him. Way to think so little of your friend's humanity. Made me hate her a little bit.

I disliked the Brienne chapters for a really petty reason: "I'm looking for a girl of three and ten..." was when I first really noticed the "x and y" affectation, and I couldn't stop noticing it after that. Upon rereads, GRRM did use that counting structure in the earlier books, but he also used standard numbering (e.g., Tyrion counted the rungs on the ladder the standard "fifty-six, fifty-seven" etc.). AFFC was where he started using it almost exclusively, and in turn it made me start noticing some of his other irritating idioms. "Much and more" grates on my nerves, and "words are wind" makes me want to throw things.

It's possible that Tyene's mom didn't become a septa until after her affair with Oberyn, though I'm probably being charitable. When I first saw the "hi, I'm actor so-and-so, and I've been cast as ___ for season 5" video, my reaction to Tyene was "I guess they'll put a wig on her". Nope! I should have realized then that they'd be the Sand Snakes In Name Only.

D&E Spoilerish but not really: Delta1212 -- what's the context of the "single best burn" because I'm drawing a blank? Also: Me too, for the longest time I read that as a GRRM intentionally different spelling of Damphyr and wondered why he was adding vampires into the story.

Duncan the Tall was mentioned on the show when Joffrey was reading the White Book (and mocking Jaime's lack of accomplishments in comparison) just prior to the Purple Wedding. Regarding Olenna: I think the "marrying Targaryens was all the rage" comment is about a later generation. The D&E stories are taking place about a century before Game of Thrones. Mystery Knight spoiler:

I picked up the Knights of the Old Republic, I mean, a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms last night and I'm already 1/2 way through it. It's a very quick read since the book si padded out with illustrations. So far (I'm in the middle of the second story) it hasn't added anything to the Song of Ice and Fire narrative. "Mildly amusing" is the best I can do to describe it so far. I think I'd recommend going directly to AFFC. I definitely agree there. We don't know a lot about the other brothers from the books, but Garlan's interactions with Sansa and Tyrion made him seem decent. and the fact that Wylas has friendly correspondence with Oberyn shows that he probably has a good head on his shoulders. So "Lets take three kind, decent, honorable characters and mush them into one, then throw away all that and make his defining characteristic be that he sleeps with men" is baffling.

The Ghost of High Heart: First time I re-read SoS that gave me the creeps. And sent me scrambling to see if I could match the other parts of both of her prophecies.

Halloween for Shimpy and Christmas for the rest of us! So glad you got to the UnCat reveal. It was quite a "wtf" moment. On a different topic, this is another area where I thought the show improved on the books: Tyrion's final confrontation with Tywin. In the books, he is again very glib. The show was much more emotional.

I did like Freya for once this episode, but she's kind of becoming the Bonnie-come-cast-a-spell-for-us of this show. But that's okay since I don't really care for the actress, so if she's going to be a walking plot device, so be it. I was pulled out of the scenes at the Stricks party because of the costuming. All the men were in tuxes, sure. All the women were in black, white, grey, or silver. Except Hayley, who of course was in bright red. And Aurora was in blue. It's just a cheap way to make the otherwise bland Hayley stick out. If she's trying to be sneaky, why did she leave him a message last episode saying "see you soon!"? Other than the aforementioned batshit crazy. I assumed Aurora was in Rebekkah's sire line, since they writers seem to be going for some sort of twisted weird family parallel thing. I totally agree, particularly when you consider that prior to Finn's death, no one had any reason to even suspect the importance of it in the first place. Aya (I keep hearing "Arya" when they say her name) said that Marcel would the first non-Elijahan in their organization; how would they know? Is it like Divergent where they give them some weird test to determine which faction they belong to? Heh, now I'm trying to figure out what faction each of the Mikaelson's belongs in.

You took the words right out of my mouth, err, keyboard.

I find that baffling, and not at all plausible. This episode had all the hallmarks of a second unit episode. 1. Focused on one member of the cast 2. Said cast member is conveniently absent from another episode 3. Shot in a different location I figured they filmed this at the same time they were filming the pilot with the remaining cast, i.e., out of order, so that EH would have already done all her stuff on Planet Blue Filter before she was rescued. I guess not.

Thank you for that clarification, I agree that Jeyne was probably prompted into "comforting" Robb. As to why Sybell thought it was a good move is anyone's guess. The way she's been described, she seems like a wealthy parvenu who married a landed but poor aristocrat as a way to climb the social ladder. Maybe she saw this as an opportunity to climb higher by snaring this King in the North who (at the time) was winning. You're right, it does seem an awfully big risk to play Jeyne's V-card on the chance that Robb isn't a love-'em-and-leave-'em guy like his namesake. The "Jeyne Westerling" vs "Jeyne Stark" on the pardon: I guess I never noticed it because they seem to play fast and loose with which family name a woman is referenced by. Cat is sometimes referred to as a Stark and other times referred to as a Tully, based on the context of the conversation. Jeyne's mother is usually referred to as a Spicer (probably to emphasize her parvenu status because a lot of the characters look down on up-jumped merchants) That was Rolph Spicer, brother of Sybell. "Here's your reward, a castle that's been an abandoned ruin for a couple of decades after Tywin annihilated an entire family line. A real fixer-upper. Be sure to sing the song at every feast!"

Non-spoilery answer: Jeyne told Catelyn that her mother was giving her a "posset" to increase fertility. It's possible that Sybell was slipping her a contraceptive without her knowledge. It's also possible that Jeyne knew full well that the posset was a contraceptive and was lying to Cat, though why bother with the lie? "Robb and I are knocking boots 3-4 times a day trying to get pregnant" doesn't need the embellishment.

Another "that's not how planets work" rant: Jemma and Will went to watch the sunrise, which she stated would be brief and wouldn't recur for another 18 years. Her justification was that they were near one of the poles. What? I can buy the 18 Earth-years of darkness due to the planet having a long orbital period around its sun and them being near a pole during local "winter". E.g., Jupiter has a 12-year long "year" But once the sun started to rise, the days would get longer as the planet continued around its sun until they had full sunlight for the entire day. I guess the portal could have dropped them in an uninhabited part of Westeros during the Long Night, but that would be a really weird crossover.

I'm being really dense. I don't remember this at all, can someone point me to the book / chapter this is in? Early Bran chapter in Clash?

Those two plots used to be tied together. Jaiying's group of Inhumans tried to steal the monolith because they believed it was a weapon against them. Evidently it was a weapon against anyone, if you could get them to stand close to it when it was "randomly" opening. Which brings on another rant: Simmons was able to determine when the portal would open again, and said it was based on the moons orbiting Planet Blue Filter. Moons don't randomly orbit, therefore the portal opened in some sort of pattern. It's beyond belief that NASA (then SHIELD) would have possession of this thing for years and wouldn't be measuring the time intervals between openings. Especially NASA, since they already knew it was a portal to another planet and not just some randomly melting lava-lamp. Simmons had the advantage of being able to see the moons, but even without them, it should be occurring in a recognizable pattern. I know that's a nitpick, but it's right up there with carbon-dating sand. If you're going to use real science (orbital mechanics in this case), get the basics right.

That's an excellent point. Book!Joffrey is only 13, and Tywin also commented that he still had time to whip him into shape to be a good king. So he'd probably take a couple of years to evaluate whether he'd be able to reform Joffrey (once Cercei is married off and her bad influence is gone) before deciding that he's irredeemable and quietly get rid of him via a "hunting accident" or something. Then put either Joffrey's spawn (assuming any were born by then) or Tommen on the throne and continue to rule through a minor-king.