SeanC

It looks really good on the cover. The other image is a BTS still, so the lighting, etc., is different than it will look on film. I'm surprised they opted to go for that costume, though. The series has eschewed the more impractical superhero costumes to date, no matter how iconic.

One of the most ridiculous memes around this movie. He doesn't look any more like him than Ronan the Accuser did.

So did, among other things, Felicity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, and Veronica Mars.

Clarke's nomination is the biggest surprise for me.

I'm not surprised. Gina was the only aspect of the show I thought had a chance, and even that was never great. The CW is just not considered a serious network (the Emmy hierarchy favours prestige cable and now Internet-based shows, followed by the big broadcast networks).

Yeah, I tend to think D&D will try to keep her around as long as possible.

The "no man of woman born", etc. are secondary prophecies in Macbeth. The key one, the one that incites the plot, is simply the witches telling Macbeth he will be king (and that Banquo will found a line of kings), which is what prompts him to murder Duncan. Moreover, the secondary prophecies (as well as some of the phrasings in the initial one) are the witches being malicious jerks. Which feeds into your second issue. Cersei barges into Maggy's tent and kicks her awake. She's pointedly annoyed with her. You're correct that there are any number of other ways she could have phrased it to mess with Cersei, but that doesn't mean using the "little brother" phrasing is somehow inexplicable (depending on how her prophesying works, she may even be deliberately willing Cersei to misinterpret it).

Maggy says "another". It's meant to be one person, and I expect it's Dany (which many people object to as being too predictable, but GRRM's stories are not driven primarily by trying to catch the audience off-balance).

I agree that Sansa has the closest connection to Cersei, but I don't think it's likely to be her. I'd say the show's changes have only made that seem less likely -- in the books, at least, you can argue about whether the Vale is going to get involved in the next round of politicking in the South. In the show, Sansa has been sent to (and seems likely to remain in) the Northern theater, far away from Cersei.

Arya has always had a strong sense of justice. That usually manifests in punishing wrongdoers, of course, but she always wants to stick up for people being victimized as well, and her family and friends are incredibly important to her. The idea that she would ignore an endangered member of her family when they were in danger just does not fit with her characterization.

DOFP completely altered the timeline, so the specific events of the original trilogy are no longer relevant (though it seems like we're meant to assume broad-strokes versions of the first two did; but seeing as we're not going into the future, that's irrelevant). Xavier also has knowledge of the future timeline, which he's evidently used well in terms of gathering people. The writers have indicated they're also using the timeline alteration as a carte blanche as far as characters' ages, etc. (Jubilee, Angel). It's really not complicated, when you get down to it. Basically a soft reboot. No, it wasn't. It was meant to be exactly what it was, a prequel.

She wasn't expecting to get caught. I don't see anything in the series that suggests the list is that important. Arya has always been about helping people, if she can, and her family; at the end of season 4, her biggest concern was to go to the Wall, to see Jon again. What's happened since that would change that?

The best explanation for the removal of the valonqar language, in my opinion, is that the identity of the valonqar is exactly who you would think it was (Jaime), and the show, which value surprise over everything else, didn't want to spoil that. It's not the same as saying Cersei's kids will die, since that doesn't specify who will do it or when. Wight Tommen really doesn't make sense as a fulfillment of the prophecy. Where's the tragedy there? "Haha, foolish woman, you failed to account for the idea that it might be the zombified corpose of your younger son?"

When Tyrion first raises the idea of breaking Joffrey's betrothal to Sansa and making the offer to the Tyrells instead, Cersei spends two pages arguing against it even though every other councilor immediately sees it's a good idea. There's never any indication in the text at the time why she's so opposed to this idea. The common speculation is that she considers Sansa, who is a powerless hostage and who she has concluded is an idiot, could never be the Younger More Beautiful Queen who is meant to cause her so much grief -- but Margaery, daughter of the single-most-powerful house in the realm, is a much better fit for that bill. Considering how AFFC features her immediately going on the warpath against Marg when she gets the opportunity, it's worth noting that she hated the idea from the get-go for no particularly obvious reason.

You're right that there's no contest, but it would be because she would choose to save her sister.There isn't a single example where Arya has prioritized revenge over helping people she cares about. With Trant she prioritized revenge over killing some random guy for reasons she had no emotional investment in at all.

Cersei's own thoughts give no indication she's lying. And having the whole thing be the result of the septa's error completely removed Cersei's own culpability, as she was acting in "good faith" on the information provided.The tragedy is that the prophecy is accurate, but Cersei's own extant biases distort her interpretation of the words (both her willingness to villainize the infant Tyrion and her unwillingness to suspect Jaime). As far as when the prophecy occurred to GRRM, there is a particular point in ACOK where Cersei's behaviour makes much more sense if she's acting out of concern motivated by it.

In a lot of ways I don't mind the battle being cut, because Tyrion's combat abilities are somewhat hard to swallow, and I think it would have been difficult to credibly depict Peter Dinklage as killing machine in pitched battle.

The depatures from the books become greater and greater every season. Season 2 is not nearly as distinct from the source as Season 5, but it's definitely more pronouncedly different than Season 1 (virtually always to its disadvantage). Not a spoiler as to contents, but merely the characters whose stories are the most changed for the worse, without further elaboration:

She wasn't "about" to get beaten, she was getting beaten, which was the culmination of prior physical abuse that Joffrey ordered. The point of the plot was to get her to Winterfell so that she could be raped and abused and then rescued by Theon. If they wanted to get her to the North, there were innumerable ways to do that. And the idea that this was inevitable is ridiculous, because any sensible person would never have gone into the Boltons' power to begin with, and if they agreed to, it would only be because they had an actual plan for how to defeat them (and no, sitting around doing nothing is not a plan).

He's said as much, I believe.

Sansa was not "protected from having bad things happen to her" in earlier seasons. She was viciously abused in King's Landing, physically and psychologically. Sansa didn't save herself. Theon saved her, motivated by, at most, her inadvertent influence. All her actual attempts to save herself failed. It's not an unrealistic expectation that if the plot contrives to send her to Winterfell there's something she can actually do there. Seeing as she's meant to be learning to play the game of thrones, it's completely nonsensical to send her somewhere she can't do that. Except she wanted a fatal wound. She explicitly said she'd rather die than be returned to face a lifetime of rape, torture, and mutilation.

Littlefinger's not staying in King's Landing -- indeed, since we didn't see him in the last three episodes at all, he may already have left. He went to KL to obtain Cersei's go-ahead to invade the North, which he got. He'll be moving forward with that plan, which will put him back in the same story area as Sansa. Seeing as he's probably the main villain in her book story, this would be the writers trying to fit the pieces of the plot arc back together after sending Sansa on a Jeyne Poole detour. Now, I expect she'll be heading for the Wall at the start of the season, since Littlefinger isn't close by even if she wanted to go to him (and, for the record, I don't think the writers are going to have this season be what turns her against him). Nobody contradicts him, and what he says fits entirely with what we actually see of the Faceless Men, and other references (for instance, in TWOIAF it's stated that for the Prince of Dorne to hire a Faceless Man to kill Aegon I's son and heir Aenys would basically have meant selling off all the wealth of Dorne).

I don't think Sansa ending up back with Littlefinger (which I agree will happen) means she separates from Theon. There's no reason Littlefinger would care whether Theon was there or not, that I can see (if anything, he has value, being a Greyjoy, albeit a badly-mauled one). The idea about his going with Davos is an interesting one, though. Theon is one of those characters whose future I really don't have much of a sense of.

This is old, but it wasn't posted here, so: Bryan Singer and Sophie Turner at archery practice. Today is the Comic Con FOX panel, with most of the cast in attendance, so I hope we get some details (costumes would be great).

I agree with Conan, that interview with the GOT cast ended super abruptly (though he did a decent job of involving everybody to one degree of another, given that there were nine of them).