Andeleisha

For those of you with timeline whiplash, this was bothering me too, so I put together a timeline for the show: http://www.fandomfollowing.com/how-much-time-has-passed-on-game-thrones/

Me too, Avaleigh! I hope they release it someday, or at least a copy leaks online. I adore Jennifer Ehle.

Woohoo, rewatch!! LETS ALL TELL SHIMPY WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE A BOOKWALKER FIVE YEARS AGO! So I watched episode 1 yesterday and (since I'm watching this with an eye towards shimpy's experience!) the thing I was reminded of was how EXCITED I was to see all these characters in the flesh for the first time. They were already familiar to me from the books, so seeing them on screen was like "oh hello, you're Catelyn!" On rewatch, this feeling especially struck me with the minor characters. (The major TV show characters have grown too much to feel new I guess?) I kept thinking "That's Rodrick!" or "That's Jory!" They all show up in these early episodes, and while I think the show does a better job of explaining their job titles in later episodes, certainly in the pilot recognizing them felt like easter eggs for book fans. shimpy, did you know that there is actually an UNAIRED pilot out there? They didn't like it so they re-wrote it and recast a few parts before they gave us the pilot we all know and love. Here's a link to an article about the unaired pilot! (Apologies if this has been linked before, my brain is a little mushy today.)

Hey, we're supposed to start our season 1 rewatch today! Anyone else going to watch along?

I've always liked the idea of Dany on Drogon, Jon on Viserion, and Aegon on Rhaegal. I like the symbolism of Jon getting a white dragon like his white wolf, calling back to his Stark roots, and Aegon gets the dragon named for his father. Also, on Mel's appearance -- remember that in the books, Mel is not canonically beautiful. Cressen describes her as "She was not beautiful. She was red, and terrible, and red."

Response to Impin's second spoiler box:

Joke about season 6 trailer: I can't wait for gotgifsandmusings and theculturalvacuum to do a write up on it :) On the topic of a full show re-watch: Since S6 premieres April 24th, if we wanted to give ourselves a week to watch each season, that means we'd need to start watching by March 20th. So I say we start after shimpy finishes the Winds chapters! Unless we're migrating over to Twitter or whatever to do live viewings, I think we can all fast forward through those scenes that gives us the creeps! :) For me the scenes in Craster's Keep in season 4 were the hardest to watch.

Hi shimpy, I know we've still got the Winds sample chapters for you to read, but I was wondering if you wanted to do a re-watch of the television show now that you've read the books? This is the time of year when I usually do a rewatch in preparation for the new season, so if you were interested, maybe we could extend the fun of this thread and all rewatch together? Season six airs on April 24h, so we've got plenty of time. I thought I'd bring it up early because I know not everyone enjoys/has the time to binge watch!

Oh god yes. I also had not thought about "damp hair" until this forum! I'd always pronounced in "Dam fair" in my head, because "the Damfair" sounds like a self-important religious title. Especially with the ph in there, I thought it was the name for the Drowned God's high priest. He's referred to so frequently as "the Damphair" it never occured to me that it could be descriptive. Who the hell names anyone THE Damp Hair?

Hahahahahahaha, oh Dev, that is a wonderful description. I can't even argue with your assessment, the guy is basically just a window into Doran, he doesn't have a whole lot of personality. But that didn't bother me at all, and I enjoyed his chapters precisely because it was presented in such an unbiased, factual way. I think that was stylistic choice to underline the discomfort of the revenge plot. Hotah's feelings don't invite the reader to become emotionally invested in the Dornish revenge, it has to stand on it's own merits. Fans obviously do invest in that plotline, but I personally feel like a lot of the emotional heft is driven by Arianne's perspective. "Likable" so perfectly captures what is great about the Davos POV. Don't get me wrong, Martin has written some of the most compelling and beautifully crafted character arcs I have ever encountered. Catelyn, Theon, Jaime....they are truly works of art. But they can be pretty uncomfortable to read. Davos is such a treat to read in the midst of all those bleak hopes. I'm probably one of like five people who loved Dance, and who loved it because of the Tyrion and Dany chapters. While I can see all the flaws that people complain about, the wheel-spinning Martin is doing here just works for me. Tyrion is so volatile and intense it reads like a roller coaster, and I'm a huge geek for administrative minutiae. (Why yes I AM a project manager!) I so empathize with Dany for feeling overwhelmed and beaten down, but I also spend the entire novel thinking about how to re-organize her government. These quirks make it so fun for me to sink in and really engage with the text. Which reminds me, shimpy, did you check out the Mereenese Blot essays on Dany? It's been linked here in the past but I don't know if you'd been spoiled enough yet :) Here's the link if you haven't: https://meereeneseblot.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/untangling-the-meereenese-knot-part-i-who-poisoned-the-locusts/ I'm sure you'd love it, this is one of the most well-known and respected metas out there, even GRRM himself has applauded it.

Lol Terra, you almost make me want to root for SanSan! Spoilers for TWOW Alayne preview chapter:

Also does anyone have those links to the early Unsullied threads that shimpy mentioned? I only joined end of season 3/beginning of season 4.

I always wonder how much the lack of editing is the author vs the publishing house. (I totally agree with you that this series suffers from bloat.) From a business perspective, why waste money and resources editing something when you know it will sell regardless? I wonder if that means they don't push as hard on the author as they might have otherwise.

So one of my favorite things to speculate about is the identity of the Faceless Men. Now, this might be entering crack theory territory, but to me, this was the thing that convinced me that Martin is telling a much, much deeper story than I thought. This thing has layers upon layers. I don't believe we talked about this paragraph during your read, shipmy, which is from AFFC: (Correct me if this has already been covered though!) A lot of these people sound awfully familiar, don't they? The thing I find most intriguing is the man with the stern face and pale eyes. That sounds like it could be Roose Bolton, and the idea of him having ties to the Faceless men just blows my mind! I think most people believe that the fat fellow is Illyrio, which could maybe make sense? Although geeze that would mean Illyrio has a finger in a ton of secret plots. Not clear if Varys is in on it too, although him having ties to the Faceless Men would explain a lot about his disguises in the Red Keep. I'd prefer to think the fat fellow is Marwyn (the Maester who taught Mirri Maz Duur and Qyburn, the one who Sam met who then immediately set off to find Dany). I just have a hard time seeing Varys in alliance with a guild that uses magic, although maybe it's just Illyrio and Varys doesn't know. I admit the physical description doesn't *quite* fit -- Marwyn is described as having a broken nose, not a hook nose, and I think the sourleaf he chews would turn his teeth red, not yellow, but still! The fierce eyes would fit Marwyn better than Illyrio, because Marwyn is described as looking more like a soldier than a Maester. The handsome man with the different colored beard -- I think Daario is the only character who is described as dying his beard more than once? I guess maybe the Faceless Men could have planted him there to keep an eye on Dany but that DEFINITELY in crack theory territory. The Lordling I think is Garlan Tyrell, but that's based on absolutely nothing, so. Later in Dance, (ch 64, the Ugly Girl) Arya serves at a council of Faceless Men, where they talk about assassinating someone -- they go around the room saying whether or not they know someone. I've wondered if the people know in common is supposed to be clue to help us figure out their identities but I've got nothing. There's another man at this gathering who is described as having pox marks on his face. Again, character who is described as having pock marks on his face? Bowen Marsh. Maybe Jon's assassination was a plot of the Faceless Men all along. Of course, Bowen Marsh the Faceless Man shouldn't be killing Jon, since he knows him. Maybe the Faceless Men trade faces with each other to infiltrate and then kill their targets, which means that the characters their playing aren't real people at all, just roles they play. Maybe Daario isn't Daario at all, but a succession of new and different Faceless Men spying on Dany. Paints Dany's affair with him in a whole new light.

Congratulations, shimpy! Although I'd exercise caution venturing out into the wilder Internet as there are still the sample Winds of Winter chapters out there :) What should we do next ?! Put together a list of the best meta essays? Dump everything we know about season six? The first teaser came out last week, shimpy, you could watch it now!

But you're not alone! You have your nice friends on the internet to keep you company :) My boss tends to frown on me opening wine this early but I can be sneaky if we can keep reading!

Ugh, whenever things like that happen it makes me wish for an "undo" button in real life. I felt that myself this week when I laid down on my bed before work...only to discover my dog had puked on my pillow. Back in the shower!

But like..."it's complicated" is actually not a reason or an excuse when the thing is "your job." (Not that I think you are suggesting this, but they certainly do from time to time.) Especially now that the show is so popular, it has essentially an unlimited budget, they could hire as many people as they need to get things done correctly. All of the the things that go into filming (location scouting, sets, casting, costuming, etc) get done, and, they get done well. Almost everything we see on screen is an absolute masterpiece, the casting on this show is some of the best I've ever seen, the actors are wonderful even with silly lines. It's just the writing that is bad. And I'm not denying that writing (which drives all of the above things) is a more involved process, but that is all the more reason for them to get their shit together. They have not lowered their standards when it comes to all the other things that makes GoT such a high production value show. And the thing that makes the writing so bad usually is not the dialogue of the scenes themselves. It almost always comes back to the logic: why did they slow down one plot, or speed up another, or send a character to a totally different place. And it just BOGGLES MY MIND that they apparently don't think these things through. Like have they never heard of a story board? MY KINGDOM FOR SOME POST IT NOTES! I would give ANYTHING to facilitate the meeting in the writers room when they are outlining the season. We are reverse engineering their intentions and decisions from what we see on screen and their interviews. It always comes back to: either they are genuinely clueless, or they just don't care that much. Those are both bad, and they both mean that this adaptation is less wonderful than it might have been. That's the tragedy of it all. I can't speak for everyone else but I know that is where my anger and frustration with this show come from :(

Sorry Delta I think I might have extrapolated your last comment "the show is different, but I don't think it's necessarily any better or worse than what is in the books" to apply to the whole show, when in context maybe you were only referring to Daznek's Pit?

This is my favorite analysis of book vs show Dany flies off on Drogon: http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/120985002501/why-what-you-just-watched-with-dany-was-totally Totally safe to click on shimpy, I checked :) Only covers events that you have read. Okay but Delta I have to ask you: do you really think season 5 of the show was good television? Sincerely asking, not trying to be snarky! Completely setting the books aside, so much of the season was just weak, I'm at a loss to understand what you liked about it. Can you talk a little bit about what scenes or storylines worked for you? (Again, independent of how they changed from the books.) Spoilers for season 5:

Aaand, welcome to the frustration of BookWalkers! You can pick up your complimentary wine and your blood pressure medication at our weekly meetings. The argument that the TV show is separate from the books and therefore should not be critiqued based on the books has never held water with me. The whole POINT of doing an adaptation is that a lot of people really like a particular story and want to see it on screen. That's part of why it's so frustrating to see the show mess up so badly: IT WAS RIGHT THERE ON THE PAGE. What are you doing telling a crappy story when you had a good one right in front of you ?! I'm not a book purist in the sense that I think everything should be adapted exactly as is, but I do think that adaptations have a responsibility to the source material. When you are working from a successful story, creators should really ask themselves "Why am I making this change?" more often. They should be trying to tell the same story, with the same message, the same themes. (Spoiler tagging just in case: this is what I wished they done with Season 5.)

I've seen a few posts on the theory of something coming out of the sea/primordial elemental gods, notably this one: http://boiledleather.com/post/136688761948/the-world-of-ice-and-fire-thoughts-what-we-talk I think it is safe for shimpy to click on because it is pretty much all speculation, although I do think some of it is based on information we learn about other nations in Planetos from TWOIAF. I think they are cool theories, but I'm more interested in the character resolution than anything else in this story. (OT: for those of you interested in the Magicians, you can stream the pilot for free on SyFy's website right now. It doesn't technically premiere on TV until Jan 25. And yeah, the first book is the weakest in the series, books 2 and 3 are much better mostly because of (mild) )

I for one would not mind a few more cuddle parties in this series. Emotional and Jedi cuddling also acceptable.

I've always suspected that Lemore is Tyene Sand's mother -- all we know about her is that she was a septa. Tyene has blonde hair and blue eyes. Doran could have sent Lemore to Illyrio, but I don't think Illyrio has told Doran Aegon's alive. (Which is probably another reason why he is fake.)

I think there is a difference between a character who is morally grey (which Tyrion definitely is) vs a villain. Tyrion does all kinds of awful things, but he isn't trying to execute an evil plan or trying to battle against the forces of good. (I'm struggling with how best to describe this without using the words "Tyrion isn't an evil overlord.") But most of all, in story, he's not supposed to be an antagonist the way someone like Roose Bolton is. If anything he's a protagonist, just a very problematic one! I'll save my favorite tinfoil theory on Roose Bolton for later this book :)