Yeh, I would have loved it had they stuck more closely to the deceitful capricious Shae not the devoted then scorned, has-reason-to-be-pissed version we got.

Well yeh you'd have to ask FCH and his legion of industry contacts. I didn't say I agreed.

Absolutely, and the annoying thing is, there's no good reason to do it. HBO are hardly afraid of complex, gray characters or layered psychology but GoT goes for broader and flatter every time they have the choice. It makes for a 2nd tier show unfortunately.

Well the grade point isn't up for interpretation. I shall have to reread when was said about 2 and 3 and see what grades they got, cheers.

Ah right, yeh with you now. D&D can be weirdly tone deaf to big parts of the character arcs in the books, it's a big unwieldy series so I can cut them some slack but not with really thorny and important stuff like this.

No, it's the only reply you've had actually.

No, Martin is more than happy to make Tyrion full of grey streaked with black and a little white. It's D&D who've softened him up.

Removing a major part of his character is a bold choice, I'll grant you that, but what makes it better?

As the AV staff make clear the grade is mostly meaningless, the review does not read like it's anywhere near as positive.

GRRM chose the showrunners? I was under the impression HBO did that, could you link me to the info please?

Agreed, the choices they make in adapting the books range from good (Dany/Drogo's "wedding night") to the pointless (Locke at the wall) to the downright stupid (killing the Tickler off early doors depriving us of the entire series greatest moment). Yet people treat B&W as saviours of a hacky fantasy novel. It's really…

According to Film Crit Hulk B&W really despise Martin and his plotting (the Orson speech is apparently really about GRRM) so I'm not suprised they don't treat the material all that well.

Women aren't men without testicles.

In basically every way in fact, even stuff like giving Cersei more to do in the first few seasons isn't more mature as it's far more effective to start getting POV's from her in AFFC.

SPOILERS

You've inferred something you have no evidence for. The original criticism to which he responded was not that the amount of violence is condensed compared to history books (it can't be the original criticism as Martin is the person to bring history books into the discussion) it was that the books feature gory violence.

In response to the criticism that the show is violent and gory Martin says history books are full of similar violence, this is undoubtedly true and a fair response to the criticism. Taking that answer and saying it's an invalid retort to a different criticism is pointless.

It's a troll, it thinks guys are getting off on the rape scenes.

That story from Varys is fantastic and people don't give Martin enough credit for digging up these contradictions in belief systems and what it says about our underlying natures. Far easier to take a surface read and criticise the outcomes of these contradictions for being nasty.

Yeh Sansa is NOT a victim, she was but she's finally taking control, calling this "Stockholm Syndrome" completely undermines her and perpetuates the boring sexist victim narrative for young women in the fantasy genre..