I suspect Martin is salty about some of the times Weiss and Benioff have contextualized latter-day plot points in the show by saying they happened in the books. For one, the divergence is big enough that an extremist could fairly say that constitutes them spoiling Martin's intentions, and furthermore it's disingenuous…

Right before this all potentially changes I can finally say what I've been waiting to say about this series:

It's a great scene, but even with the excuse of her biography, I'm just always going to be peeved at "elegant villain enjoys classical music" as a trope.

I'm not particularly dreading the Kinjapocalypse - I already have the same Kinja handle anyway, and I guess I'll see if it makes sense for me to do some other special thing with my account, but since other people have posted comments to this effect I guess I'll just note that at this writing I'm 12 up votes shy of 25…

I'll disagree only in that my impression of the first couple of seasons was that they got Loras pretty well - he was a skilled and willing fighter who happened to be gay, and if the character could come off as a little petulant, well he does in the books as well, and for that matter, so does Finn Jones over on Iron…

Danny's youthful enthusiasm means that he thinks it's cool how strong Jessica and Luke are, and he quickly grows to respect Matt's skills as a fighter in addition to thinking his supersenses (and baton gadget!) are neat. He still is unduly confident because, after all, he is the Immortal Iron Fist, but it's tempered…

Matt's high horse about not killing and Karen's trauma about killing Wesley is the interesting character beat the show keeps leaving dangling that I'm afraid they'll never dig into.

Not even superninjas anymore, though. In DD Season 2 Nobu had like hundreds of guys who could still their heartbeats so effectively Matt had to track them by their breaths. Now it's just some regular ninja mooks and the Five Fingers themselves.

I made this comment about Diamondback on Luke Cage, but it really doesn't work for me to introduce a character acting "out of character" if you're not going to give that real weight. We finally get to find out what the Hand is really about, and it's just a downer, and if the intent is what you say, then they didn't do…

I can't believe it, but … I … I agree with Manimal.

I believe you've seen the whole thing, but Luke CAN get knocked aside; he certainly does by Elektra - I just think there's a resistance to sitting down and really defining what Luke can handle - even if you don't consider "realistic" physics - that is counter to my own nature anyway but also works better in comics…

google tells me Newcastle to Paris is 556 miles; nerdery tells me Eastwatch to Dragonstone is more like 1800.

It's not compressed, it's expanded, because it's fantasy and everything is bigger. Casterly Rock is substantially richer than the richest goldmine we know about on Earth, and it, Winterfell, Harrenhall, Storm's End, and the Eyrie are all basically Impossible Fantasy Castles for one reason or another. The Wall is…

Show Renly, maybe. Not Book Renly. Book Renly outright rejects Catelyn's proposal that he and Stannis set aside their differences, team with Robb to finish kicking the shit out of the Lannisters, and then hold a Great Council to settle the succession; in his mind, he gets to be king because he thinks he'd be good at…

A surprising number of people on the internet are always ready to get snarky about not understanding the conventions of how fiction works.

I don't know why you're all getting annoyed at Sherlock Holmes suddenly displaying the ability to fly. You weren't bothered by his living at an entirely fictional address.

They've also just made the heroes more "heroic" even though they haven't made them more competent. Tyrion is a MUCH nicer character than he is in the books, to a degree that when you consider some of the specific adaptive choices is almost offensive*. In Essos Dany has a genuine political conversion event - from being…

What it means is that Weiss and Benioff are run of the mill modern liberal types and have no idea how to engage with the political realities of the world they're working in except by superimposing that framework. A genuinely populist religious movement drawing on some of the same motivations as those which drove the…

Gao is so much better than all the stuff they dragged her through in Iron Fist and this show. Sigourney Weaver gives this series a punch just by being magnetic on camera and selling conviction, even though I think the story undermines her; but the actress playing Gao has been her equal in that regard since her chats…

Because it's a terrible way to live, which is why Renly was a bad guy, not that the showrunners noticed. Peaceful power transfer is important, and the nice thing about primogeniture, which is obviously a dumb way to pick a GOOD ruler, is that it make fairly clear who the next king is supposed to be with minimal room…