Absolutely. I'm a college English teacher, and I have no idea how to
teach the language to a non-native speaker, or explain why it works the
way it does to native speakers for that matter. All that stuff you do to
learn a foreign language — cases and declension and such — I couldn't
begin to do for English.

Yeah, that's true enough. Even the wording of what's-her-face's prophecy (stupid prophecies) is designed to seem impossible but maybe actually happen (""When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a…

Well, she doesn't lack subtlety in terms of killing people on the sly, but can you imagine her as an actual master of whispers, ala Varys? Arya's not a spider.

Well yeah, but Dany also didn't burn her hand on the hot dragon egg, and there was no blood magic involved there.

Yes, that too.

That's kind of compelling, actually, but Arya lacks subtlety.

I could believe Staniss is dead. I just can't believe he died off-page and we hear about it in some stupid, crazy letter (one I can only assume was written in crayon) from that tinpot villain Ramsay Bolton.

Fuck that. What happened to him was terrible, but what happened to Tysha (what he allowed to happen, and even participated in) was worse. He doesn't get to die cradled in her arms. He doesn't get to find her at all.

I agree, though I'm also hoping prophecies are mostly mystical bunk and the only reason they come true is through self-fulfillment (e.g., Cersei's obsession with the Valonquar and the younger woman causes the actions that doom her).

I'll definitely be disappointed in GRRM if it turns out these key players are secretly Targaryens with divine right. It's the tropiest trope of them all. Even though R+L=J certainly seems ironclad, that would make Jon Snow an even hoarier cliche.

Yeah, but Dany's barren. What good does that do?

I think this whole conversation boils down to over-saturation. Season 4 of GoT is not significantly more violent or rapey/sexy than season 1; it's just now some viewers are like, "Ah, jeez, more tits? Really?" But I don't think you can fault a (good) show for doing the same thing it's always done just because it's…

That's one of the few sex placements that doesn't bother me. Girl getting raped in the background is not titillating; it's horrifying. We should have to see that shit, to recognize how awful her circumstances are; why should the audience be spared? As for Meera, not threatening her with rape in that context would be…

Horrible as that was, I see it not as gratuitous, but as directed at the book-readers. Think about how much book-readers salivated at the thought of novice watchers experiencing that scene (including me, to be sure). I saw poor Talisa getting gut-stabbed in close up as a way of saying, "Here you go, 'Expert.' Still…

Man, I don't know if they could do Drizzt. Can you imagine a movie in
which all the black people — especially the black women — except two
or three are evil, and the good guys (except for the protagonist, to be
fair) are all white?

I have no problem with GRRM taking as long as he damn well wants/needs to finish the books. He is, indeed, not our monkey. However, since he allowed the show to be made in the first place, has veto power on show changes that will cause too severe a "butterfly effect" in terms of the overall outline, and has to admit…

Check out a book called The Most Human Human by a guy who participated in the test as a human. It's pretty interesting.

No because on the show she is clearly much older than 10, and Grey Worm is adorable.

That's what I think too. Otherwise, what the hell are Brienne and Pod going to do until they meet Lady Stoneheart?

I saw that scene not indicative of Dany's passion for equality so much as the fact that she's still a young girl at heart, with a young girl's idealism, and foolishness.