TV is different from books. in the books, the author can spend as much time as he thinks necessary on a particular plot and have as many characters attached to it as he wants. martin did this many times in the books. interestingly, all the side characters will somehow appear later in the book, or different books. some even get POV.

but in TV, they have to work within a specific time. rather than maintain the large number of characters, they reduced it and use the time to concentrate on developing the central characters.

for example, in the 2nd book it wasnt quite clear the intention of margaery wedding renly. he just hinted it. but in book 3, it becomes quiet clear she intends to be THE queen.

on TV, they made it absolutely clear her intent during the death of renly. even adds more scripts and all.

well soap has a totally different appeal. if u read critiques about soaps, u'll be interested to know that soaps defy most written theories about writing. but somehow soaps can just go on and on and on without losing its appeal.

GoT focuses on telling the story through select POV. the story is progressing quickly, and pacing is one of the most important thing in modern tv-series. u'd have to strike just the right balance to ensure people still can follow the story without getting bored with the same characters or vice versa.

look at cancelled tv-series. some actually have good concept/appeal but failed to deliver. not everything can go down the soap path and survive.

it wasnt quite clear in the book as to whom ser mandon is serving. but afterwards it is believed that the queen ordered him to kill tyrion in the heat of battle bcoz tyrion insisted that joffrey be in the battle, risking the king's life.

cersei would do anything to protect her kind.

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Added on May 30, 2012, 12:52 pmbtw, i've always had a nagging feeling that i've seen the actor who played joffrey in some other show before.

today i realized he was in batman begins, near the end, protected by katie holme's character, then saved by batman. what a prik he become.

This post has been edited by azarimy: May 30 2012, 12:52 PM

one of the things that we have to always remember is that the story implies a lot of "situational assumptions". sometimes it is implied that this person killed that person, or this family plotted against that family. even if it's been repeated numerous times (like in the book), sometimes the truth is so much simpler.

for example, the death of jon arryn. it's so simple, so straightforward. but families went to war because of it. it's beautiful.

wait till we get to the televised version of the 3rd book. but i heard they're going to split the 3rd book into 2 seasons. so i'm not sure where the best twists in the 3rd book will be placed. it might be in the 4th season and we have to wait till 2014!

wasnt beric dondarrion already cast in the 1st season? they wanna recast him?

i for one am fine with the changes. ripping off straight from the pages of the book might not work well on screen, especially given limited time. i'd have to say, there are certain portions of the book that wasnt really needed, just serving to enrich the story, which would still be fine without it anyway.

brace yourselves.

red wedding is coming!

(for those who didnt know about red wedding or didnt read the book, DO NOT google for it!)

the 4th and 5th was supposed to be one book. but it got too big.

rather than split it according to time-progression, martin decided to split it according to group of characters.

so basically book 4 is about one group of characters, book 5 is another group; both happening at the same time. only in the 2nd half of the 5th book that the two groups combine into one story.

i'm sure they'll take this into consideration when plotting the tv-series.

i like the changes. some of the things in the book are great in text form, but can be a nightmare to turn into visual form. furthermore, it adds more to the story, makes it richer, while having a focused story telling method than the book.

the advantage of the book is, it's far broader than the tv-series. every side characters are given a certain back-story with its own invisible plot. so it might appear on the side in book 2, suddenly he/she became quite central in book 4. which i thought was brilliant, but could be very big problem to show in tv-series, because people forget these characters if they show to short. especially since they dont announce their names all the time so that u'll remember who they are.

also, one other thing that i like about POV in the book is that, it deliberately left out things that the character didnt know.

for example, in character A's POV, he left everybody dead in the inn.
so for all he cared, everybody's dead. and we were deliberately lead to believe what he believed.
only until later, when character B stumbled upon the inn, and told other character C that X is alive.
but we as the reader didnt know if X is really alive. we know A thought he killed everyone. B said he saw X alive. C only know X is alive from B.

it really creates an air of uncertainty. and we as the ready were always on our toes trying to figure out if X really alive or not? hahahhahahaha. (note that this is just an example, didnt wanna spoil anything to those who havent gone through the rest of the books).

that's why book 3 is just so awesome.

depends on where your source took it from.

US HBO may have recaps, but UK HBO usually doesnt. and sometimes the rippers themselves truncated the files to lighten the load.

there's a compilation online for all the sex/nude scenes. google it.

I cant remember whether from the book or the tv series, that the unsullied is the greatest army in the world, but even they would suffer in urban guerilla warfare.

u know, there's a very high tendency that sidekicks tend to survive well in this series.

I think eventually we'll havr a showdown of all side characters:

Bronn vs Sam vs Pod vs Missandei vs that smallest Stark kid vs the Baratheon girl vs Stannis' daughter etc etc...

Actually, its because she no longer wants to reveal herself in season 5 onwards.

did the book actually mention/feature valyrian steel could defeat the white walkers? i think i kinda missed or forgotten about that.

another thing: white walkers raises the dead to become wights, right? and wights arent affected by dragon glass or valyrian steel like the white walkers are, right?

bloody hell, lots of very interesting plots there. i'm happy enough if they could fulfill half of those!

what have been seen...