Game of Thrones Season 4 (SPOILERS WITHIN)

The Queen Regent vs. Jimmy Kimmel:

Watched it again. You are correct, sir.

.... And now, my watch has ended.

I wish HBO would consider spacing the seasons 6 months apart instead of a year apart. This is entirely too long inbetween seasons, but at that pace, I'm sure the show would over run the books. There's good reason to believe GRRM's 6th book, The Winds of Winter will be out this year.

Even though I've started the audiobooks, I don't know how far I'll get. I don't know if I'll want the books to spoil the show if that makes any sense. Having gotten a good deal of detail from the show and then diving deeper with the books has been very rewarding so far.

Go ahead. You know you want to!

She's probably thinking she wishes she could rule like they do in the show. Plenty of people in the UK need a head separation operation.

19 Emmy Nominations!! Peter Dinklage for Best Supporting Actor, Lena Heady for Best Supporting Actress and Outstanding Drama.

I finally broke down and got HBO, then binge-watched the entire fourth season over the weekend. Loved it. I am glad I never read the books, I prefer this as a visual experience.

I did have something funny happen last week. I had just finished watching Season 3 and finally saw The Red Wedding. I posted on Twitter that George RR Martin is a sick bastard. Guess who favorited my post?

@grrm

I just watched the entire season again. Even though things apparently happen differently in the books, I think we are suppose to interpret that Stannis had to get the funds to get to the wall. I'm not sure how this will change things in the future, but for me it's all new anyway.

I still don't quite understand what went down with Shae, Bronn and Tywin. To me, it seems as if Bronn betrayed Tyrion. Tywin says he wants Shae brought to his quarters. Bronn was quite explicit in telling Tyrion that Shae was taken away on a boat. Shae ends up in Kings Landing testifying against Tyrion. Bronn shows up in new fancy clothes and is now betrothed to Lady Stokeworth or whoever. Either Shae sneaked off the boat or Bronn brought her to Tywin... Seeing as how Bronn met Tywin early on in Seanon 1 at Tywin's camp, they may have had an offscreen agreement. For that matter, Bronn introduced Shae to Tyrion at Tywin's camp... And Tywin specifically told Tyrion not to take Shae to Kings Landing.

All signs point to a betrayal by Bronn to me.

Not really. There are lots of other ways for Shae to have gotten off that boat. Shae getting off on her own accord isn't really far fetched--certainly she's as likely to have betrayed Tyrion as is Bronn!--Varys is always a suspect, Bronn may simply have been wrong about not being followed, boat captains generally may be been offered an award for turning Shae over if they recognized her being smuggled out, or, given the timing of things, Bronn may have informed about what ship Shae was on only after the events of the wedding. Bronn certainly didn't bother maintaining allegiance to Tyrion once he saw which way the wind was blowing, but there's not really any strong reason to believe he set Tyrion up for the fall.

All of what you say is true, but how do you explain Bronn's new clothes and wife to be? Bronn practically admits it to Tyrion that Cersei set him up with Lawla Stokeworth. He didn't testify against Tyrion so what exactly was his price?

While I'm at it, does the last scene between Jamie and Cersei in anyway change how you see the "rape" scene from earlier in the season? Earlier, Cersei was all like stop, not here, someone may see. Jamie says "I don't care" and proceeds to seemingly rape her. In the last episode, she approached him and now he's concerned someone may see and she says to him "I don't care" and off they go. I think the thrill of being caught is part of the attraction between the two of them.

Yes, I took that to clearly mean, "I've sold you out; I told you I would if someone offered me a better price; now someone has. Sorry, mate." I didn't realize there was any doubt about that.

The thing is that Bronn took Shae to the ship before Joffrey died, and at that time Cersei and Tywin didn't really have enough motivation to pay Bronn enough to get him to sell out Tyrion. Paying him off with a noble wife and lordship only makes sense after Joffrey's death. Shae wasn't nearly important enough to merit that kind of payment on her own.

Making sure that Bronn wouldn't champion Tyrion in a trial by combat, on the other hand, was worth it. That's what Cersei and Tywin bought from Bronn, not Shae.

I'd assume Shae's role and hiding place would be thrown in as a bargain. I don't think Varys would ahve spilled the beans on that, unless he in turn got something for it, which we haven't been told.

And of course Bronn was bought but it was also a case of we are going to set you up but if you don't agree to it the plan b set up is your head on top of the castle wall next to the others. Bronn is no dummy.

Contains some book spoilers.

To add to the above book spoilers, something from the show:

I took it as:

Bronn takes Shae away to the ship, off she goes.
Joffrey karks it and Tyrion is arrested.
Cersei approaches Bronn, knowing how much Tyrion relied upon him, and bought Shae's location and him staying out of things from him, because she is a vengeful bitch, and what better way to torment her son's 'murderer' than having his confidente betray him and he women he loves go against him.

Bronn is a true sellsword, he has no advanced loyalty, he's not going to go all Han Solo on us. He may like Tyrion, but he likes the idea of a castle, money and all the wenches he can fuck a whole lot more.

And we saw that Tyrion knew that, he just thought being a Lannister he was always going to be the highest bidder, not thinking one day he'd be in the cells and Cersei would be buying Bronn's services.

^^Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought as well.

BTW, "sellsword" is a really cool name for mercenary in Martin's world.

Ok, but the term isn't new, is it?

First time I've heard it.

The term "sellsword" has made its way in to a lot of fantasy literature and gaming, to the point of being ubiquitous, but, near as I can tell, it originated with George R.R. Martin. I definitely heard the term long before I saw the show or read the books, but in a quick search I don't turn up any references that predate the A Game of Thrones novel. It may have been used before that, but A Game of Thrones is almost certainly what popularized the term.

Yep

http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sellsword

Game of Thrones has built a subway system. It will make the action flow faster......


http://www.tyznik.com/thrones/

Wow!

....

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/09/game-of-thrones-no-bran-or-hodor-season-five

More at the link. It seems like his plot line was just getting interesting.

What happened to the youngest Stark? He just sort of disappeared.