The cold winds are rising, bitches!

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Continuing the naming theme (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?t=39910&highlight=winter+is+coming), Game of Thrones season 2 is nearly upon us. Are you excited? I'm excited. This season looks set to be even better than before, although that could just be because I've now read the books so I know what's coming.

Reading the episode titles, 2 of them spring out immediately; episode 5, The Ghost of Harranhal (where Arya starts down the road of being a badass), and episode 9, Blackwater, and we all know what that entails. I just hope they decided to sink a fair amount of the sfx budget into that episode, because it deserves it.

So yeah, talk about GoT here, since it's like the best tv series in the world and it's back and all.

[Magus]

Oh, man, I dunno. I just got done watching Spartacus: Vengeance and man, it was sooooooo good this year...I'm such A Song of Ice and Fire fan that I'll still say Game of Thrones is superior IF they really pull out all the stops and go hog wild this season.

Luckily all signs seem to point to Yes.

Here's one of the first teasers from months ago for those of you attempting to know as little as possible but still wanting a little taste of what's to come:

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I read the books long ago but I am interested in knowing whether anyone read them after watching the first season? Or are reading them as you go? It'd be neat to get someone's thoughts on it who is not as involved in the series of books, since they are fairly different creatures and some people get all worked up about minor changes from the book (so very, very minor, though, I can't see why, but it takes all types, I guess). The biggest difference is how the exposition is delivered; Game of Thrones is why that New York Times writer invented the term "sexposition", since the show seemed to like to give big infodumps while two people did the nasty. But then again, plenty of expository conversations did not occur during sexytimes so I think it's a bit of a mischaracterization...

[pochercoaster]

Game of Thrones is the only reason I regret getting rid of cable. :( Argh I hope season 2 doesn't take too long to come out on DVD.

Also, I can't wait for Arya to start fucking people up. Yes.

I tried reading the first book after watching the first season and it just felt tedious. Admittedly fantasy isn't really my preferred reading genre, so.

[Magus]

The first book actually doesn't have a lot of fighting scenes in it. I felt the show did a better job of distilling down all the exciting bits, though as you can remember they cut out Tyrion's battle from the climax of the book by having him get knocked out, apparently to save money on the budget. Otherwise though they captured every fight in the book on screen, which kind of shows how little fighting actually went on. Plenty of political maneuvering though.

In any case, you should be more than satisfied with this season, as it is the one where the proverbial crap hits the proverbial fan.

Probably the only thing the book did better was deliver backstory, though the only pivotal bit of the book left out of the show is in regards to Ned's past, perhaps to make it more of a mystery than it is currently to the book readers.

[Satan's Onion]

Oooh! This should be the season where Tyrion gets to run the joint and slap Joffrey some more and generally be the awesome fucker he is. Arguably his high point as a character.

Spinoff idea! Jaime as King, so he can go sword at people and look good on the coins, and Tyrion as Hand, running it all and generally awesoming up the place. They can crack wise while solving the problems of the realm :dance:

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Yeah this is the season where Tyrion gets to play chess with Bealish and Varys, and he damn well nearly beats them both.

And I actually think Jaime and Tyrion running everything would probably be the best outcome for everyone. Shame it'll never happen.

EDIT; Ok, just saw the first ep, Tyrion stole the entire show within 5 minutes of appearing, Joffrey got slapped again, and everyone else was a badass. Things are looking good.

[Magus]

The first episode felt a little disjointed, though when I watched it again earlier today I didn't have any problems with it, so I think it may have just been my initial disappointment when watching it the first time that it was so short that made me feel down on it.

[Locke cole]

I wonder why they're calling it "Game Of Thrones Season 2" instead of "Clash of Kings".

Or, like, rebrand the first season as "A Song Of Ice And Fire: Season 1: A Game of Thrones", and continue like that.

[Magus]

Because that would be incredibly long and unwieldy? :P Really, it is just season 2 of Game of Thrones, not actually entitled Game of Thrones Season 2, and in fact the episodes do not start over, simply continuing as episode 11, 12, 13, etc. So one could simply view it as a continuation of the story of Game of Thrones (in keeping with the creators wish to make the whole thing seem like a 70 hour movie when they are done).

I do wonder if they'll ever make some TV movies based on The Hedge Knight novellas (since they're pretty much required to know who the hell Bloodraven is, for instance, as only one instance of their importance to the series as a whole), and if those would be named something like "Tales from Westeros: The Hedge Knight" or "Game of Thrones: The Hedge Knight" or what have you.

EDIT: Actually, just to clarify--the TV series as a whole is called Game of Thrones. They took the name of the first book and made it the name for the whole series. So whether or not "he is the Prince Who Was Promised, and his shall be a song of ice and fire" is still going to be a line in this thing, I dunno, I'm guessing it will be, but the title of the show definitely puts the emphasis on the political backstabbing aspects of the series and moves it away from the magical elements/mythos.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

2nd episode has been released early, look for it online at wherever. I'm starting to notice a few slight variations cropping up now between the books and the series, and that damn Ros is still unneccesarily hanging around taking up screen time.

[Osterbaum]

Yeah I was wondering how the second episode was on torrent sites a day after the first episode.

[Magus]

Some European countries released it early on their HBO Go sites or equivalents, HBO made them stop, but the cat is out of the bag. If I were them I would just go ahead and do it on the US HBO Go site so that people who are actually subscribers aren't "worse off" than the pirates, but anyway it's only another two days so...

[Magus]

So last week's episode was phenomenal, this week's episode was...kind of WTF (and I don't mean the ending, which was one of its saving graces). So many needless changes, and that Qarth scene was just badly written ("I invoke sumai!"...WTF? Is Xaro a Klingon? That sounds like something out of Star Trek, I swear...). The added scene with Joffrey and the prostitutes was eminently pointless.

...I know they can't all be the same caliber as "What is Dead May Never Die", but man, this episode just seem badly written to anyone else?

THAT SAID, next week should be pretty badass. Valar morghulis!

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Yeah the whole Quarth scene was wierd. In fact, everything involving Deanarys seems way off with all the changes they keep making. I mean I knew that her side of the story was probably going to get shafted a bit anyway this season, since there isn't much going on on her side anyway, but I didn't expect it to be this bad.

As for the Joffrey scene, I think that was probably just put into to fullfil their once an episode requirement of naked women (since Melisandre doesn't really count due to the squick factor this time), but all it seems to have done is make Joffrey even more of a horrible bastard.

I really hope next week is good though, this is probably the one episode I really care about in the whole season and if they don't make Aryas stuff suitably badass I'm going to be dissapoint.

[Magus]

If their goal was just to have sex it would have been easy to toss another sexposition scene in there (I call for a Rodrik Cassel/Osha sex scene culminating in a dissertation on the Blackfyre rebellion just to truly illustrate the stupidity of sexposition). The goal here was to show how absolutely depraved Joffrey is, but we already got that--this just seemed like pointless torture porn.

[PCD]

I have mixed feelings about making Renly and Loras spelled out. At first, I was a little grumpy that they took the ambiguity out that was present in the book, but figured it was all right to try and keep the boobs-to-dick ratio a little more in check. Last week, I loved the scene with Renly, Loras, and then Margaery; I felt like it really helped flesh out characters we haven't gotten to see much of before. However, with this week, my disappointment had started taking the lead, as apparently everyone in the damned kingdoms knows about it. When even Redshirts 45 and 87 know about it, it's just sort of absurd.

[Magus]

I dunno, by book 4 it seemed to have been spelled out as being an open secret, Jaime insults Loras openly about it in one scene. But yeah, when lowly peons like those two know, it's not surprising he decided to just go full-blown Rainbow Guard.