Spoilers below. You've been warned, people.

Spoiler

Well, for starters, Mance is dead. Refused to follow Stannis so he started a bonfire with Mance in the center. Jon's commander of the NW and refused Mel's offer to bang, she got all pissy and dropped the "You know nothing," line. Loras has been arrested by the Faith, not Margery - Lancel is back on the show with them. Tommen was banging Margery but she stopped putting out after Loras got arrested. Sansa is in Winterfell and betrothed to Ramsey, hasn't ran into Theon yet, but I await that moment eagerly. Oh yeah, Brienne and Pod have been following her. and plan on rescuing her even though she already turned them down. Jaime and Bronn are in Dorne on a super-secret mission to rescue Myrcella before the Sand Snakes murder her for what happened to Oberyn. Barristan and Grey Worm got into a scrap with some Harpy's in Mereen and it's not looking good for either, pretty sure Barristan might be dead (cliffy in episode 4). For some basic stuff: Arya's at the house of Black and White and Jorah's kidnapped Tyrion.

 

Holy fuck, they really diverged from the books a shitload. Can't imagine what's going to happen in the remaining episodes. Thank you for writing all that down.

 

Bah, I think a certain someone is alive and well, as per the Books.

But yeah, they really diverged from the book big time. The first scene alone left out something important.

 

Don't click this if you haven't watched all four eps. Seriously.

Spoiler

Who? Mance? Or Selmy? I'm pretty sure Mance is truly and properly dead. I didn't see an ounce of evidence supporting a swap. I'm 99% sure Mance is going to die heroically in the books at some point, so they probably just decided to kill him now for thematic reasons, just as they decided to axe out Lady Stoneheart.

Sidenote: I feel like they are rushing the Feast/Dance material a little. Arya and Jon's bits especially. Arya's training and the stuff with Mel at the wall are some of my favorite parts of the books. Sincerely hope that B+W are not trying to compress the series down into the initial 7 season goal just because they want to release the actors from their contracts / move on to other projects / prevent actors from getting too old. The story has flown relatively naturally so far and it would be a damn shame to cheapen that with a severely rushed ending. Here's hoping they give in to Martin and HBO and extend to 9 or 10 with maybe a prequel material interlude.

 

Hopefully, Season 5 premier inspires people to write more. Yes, I'm talking about Black Prince.

 

Spoiler

Well, I just watched the 4 episodes. I'm pretty sure they are laying the groundwork now for a R+L=J reveal at a later time. Rhaegar and Lyanna got mentioned for the first time in the same sentence since season 1, we see two contradicting POVs on Rhaegar with Sansa saying he kidnapped/raped Lyanna and Barristan saying Rhaegar didn't like violence, Selyse Baratheon calls Jon a bastard of a tavern slut which Stannis replies that such a thing wasn't Ned Stark's way etc. It's subtle stuff, but eventually it could all mean something.

Barristan was suitably bad ass. I hope he survives his wounds. I really liked it when he was telling her about her father and brother. I want more of those scenes between the two.

I'm assuming that most of the Northern lords are going to be written out of the show such as Wyman Manderly. So, I'm thinking Theon and Sansa are going to have a talk where Theon tells her that her brothers are alive somewhere. Would be pretty cool if Sansa starts making plans of her own to put her family back in power with the help of the Mormont girls. Edit: Just had a thought. Maybe Sansa sends Brienne to find Rickon?

The Arya stuff is kinda meh. Unless there's a time skip I don't see how she's going to gain the skills needed in time to be a significant player in the story.

Surprisingly I was wishing that Joffery was still alive. When Tommen backed down in front of those Faith Militant I was like "Joffery would've had them all slaughtered".

Don't know what I'm going to do for the next month now. HBO might as well release the last 6 episodes Netflix style.

 

Spoiler

I don't know if I care for this bloodthirsty incarnation of Ellaria Sand. Seems such a step down from the grieving and reasonable woman we saw in the books. It cheapened the character for me. More's the pity as I enjoyed Indira Varma's acting so far.

 

Spanks:

Spoiler

What's this about the Faith Militant you're talking? Did they completely change that too? Is it no longer Cersei who signs off on the Faith Militant while ignoring all people telling her not to legalize them?

 

Spoiler

In the show it is Cersei that brings the idea of the reinstating the Faith Militant to The High Sparrow, and no one tells her not to do it. That whole storyline has been changed,

 

Spoiler

There's no one there to dissuade her. Whereas in canon she filled the small council with sycophants, on the show, there is only her. Kevan gave a boss speech and left early on.

 

Why are you all spoilering your entire posts when the damn thread title literally says 'WARNING SPOILERS' in allcaps.

You'd expect someone who opens the thread to do so knowing what he will find.

 

I would say that putting spoilers for episodes that aren't officially released is a proper way to write about them. Especially when they have enough changes in them to slowly make it easier to list things that weren't different from the books than the ones that were.

 

Seven Hells, I hate Cersei's whitewashing. Pretty much every stupid decision she made in AFFC, from hiring incompetents and that one hot guy to ignoring good advice from smarter people, doesn't happen on the show. Pretty much the only bad thing she does is hate Margaery, a relatively minor and personal matter, and not outright buggering the Realm.

 

Well, there's also all the conniving, brother-boning, and having people killed, but I agree for the most part. Book Cersei is so fun to hate.

I understand why the showrunners went this route though. The show didn't really need two Joffreys, and humanizing a stereotypical char in small ways gives actors room to breathe.

 

You think her incest is a reason to hate her? I mean, it's weird, but the fact that she genuinely loves someone - even if it's her brother. And her children, to be fair - was probably her only redeeming quality for me.

Or the only one that stuck. Been a long while since I've read the books.

 

Cersei never loved any of them, not the way you think she did. She always saw them as reflections of herself, more so where it concerned Jaime. Look at how she acted once he lost his hand, when he started to grow a beard... she was disgusted by him, because she could no longer look at him and see the masculine reflection of herself. And when he started to reject her advances? Oh boy.

Damn shame the show deviated a shitload where this is concerned.

 

She absolutely loves her children. Her whole motivation is to secure life and success for them. It's why Joffrey's death destroyed her and she was so upset about Myrcella and Tommen being sent away.

 

If you want to argue that her love for Jaime is a twisted form of narcissism, sure, fine. I still think she cares for him.

But what Schrodinger said.

Either way, she's still an irredeemable cunt. I just thought singling out incest as a reason to be odd.

 

In Jamie and Cersei's case, yes. It's not the fact that they're blood related that I have problems with. I mean sure, their kids will probably have double copies of a ton of degenerate recessive alleles, and that's a pretty shitty thing to burden your offspring with, but whatever.

It's really the sexualization and distortion of close familial love that I find distasteful. Like, if they had grown up apart in separate castles, I wouldn't give two fucks.

This is the same reason I find animes that try to justify incestual relationships on the basis that the chars involved are not actually blood related (step-siblings/adopted/parental-gaurdians) so awful. Fuck that. They're still family. Genetic relationships don't equate to family relationships.

/rant

 

If anyone else in the universe is like me and hasn't read the books yet (Man, the first one is so dry), you can get all four on Google Play store for 99 cents. Perhaps I'll just fight through them so I can finally watch the show.