You're in the comments of the 'expert' recap. The 'newbie' recap is the one with a 'no book talk' rule.

I know, right?

Ooooh, you could well be right. Maybe I was taking things too readily at face value, as well as overestimating just how much book stuff they'd feel the need to cut. We'll find out soon enough, I suppose.

Heh. It was more like "Ned Stark was ever ALIVE in these books? Wow, this story starts earlier than I imagined!"

Aww. :-<

It's just a wee bit worrisome when the person you're relying on to keep you from going off the rails and into vindictive Mad King territory…is a guy who strangled his lover in a fit of rage and then murdered his father in the privy.

Totally. There is nothing more badass than someone who is definitively *not* a badass nonetheless struggling to face death with dignity.

She does seem nice, if maybe not too bright. I like imagining that she's just so thrilled to get out of the Twins and away from her creepy family that she doesn't even notice that she's right in the middle of a gothic horrorshow. She's just wandering around Winterfell, grinning happily to herself and thinking: "Well!…

No, I read Clash of Kings back in the late 90s, when it first came out. A housemate of mine had picked it up, and it was lying around the living room when I came down with the 'flu. By the time I realized that it was the second book in a series, I was already interested — and anyway, I was ill, so I really felt the…

And you don't even want to *know* what he'll do to those who persist in using the greengrocer's apostrophe!

You are correct. The promise is book only.

reflecto is referring to a scene in the miniseries in which Caligula cuts his sister's unborn child out of her womb and eats it. Because, you know, he thinks they're both gods, and it's traditional for gods to swallow their offspring because Cronos or something. Surprising no one but Caligula, his sister does not…

It's my experience that this show is *much* better marathoned. I still watch it week by week, because I like being able to take part in these discussions, but IMO the show really does suffer from being watched this way.

So did I. I thought they were female stand-ins for those sadistic thugs who followed Ramsay in the books. The "Bastard's Boys" or something.

Maybe it wouldn't work out (I don't know what the import of the Grayscale is going to be this season; maybe it comes up again so they couldn't do this), but I thought it would have made a much better end-of-season stinger than an end-of-episode one. Let the audience think they both got lucky for a while. You know,…

Um, okay? I'm not seeing how this is in any way an answer to the question of what is so "suspicious" about the character's popularity with the general audience. Obviously the portion of the audience who like this character don't view this subplot as useless, otherwise I assume the characters wouldn't be so popular.…

Do you think there's going to be a seige of Mereen? I got the impression from the first episode this season that Yunkai was a done deal, over with.

I read Clash of Kings first (yeah, I know), and I absolutely thought she was supposed to be the villain. Or, more specifically, that she shared that role with the Others. I figured that she and her dragons were the Fire Villains, slowly but inexorably marching towards the 7 Kingdoms, to correspond to the Others and…

I hope that's not wrong!

Oh dear. I'm not trying to trivialize or marginalize anyone, and I'm genuinely sorry that it came across that way. My intent was just to add some perspective, that's all. I've been an internet superfan myself, and I know from personal experience that it can sometimes be very easy to lose track of how things are…