A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones Spoiler-Filled Discussion

Well yeah, but Westeros feels grounded - chiefly, in a thinly veiled War of the Roses medevial pseudo-history - in a way the books have rarely been able to do for Essos.

 

I wonder if GRRM would have been better off not showing us as much of the non-Westeros cultures in that regard, and leaving the details to our imagination like JRRT did with Rhûn and Harad...

 

Nice interview with Rose Leslie talking about Game of Thrones starting at about one minute:

http://youtu.be/wfIu8WEia8k

 

As speculated by Westeros.org yesterday, it is confirmed this morning:
http://www.amandahowardassociates.co.uk/actors/index.php

"John Stahl will shortly begin filming for the second series of Game of Thrones for HBO/Sky."

Speculation that he will play Rickard Karstark

 

Yup. Definitely kissed by fire.

 

Simon Armstrong has been confirmed as Qhorian Halfhand:

http://winter-is-coming.net/2011/10/simon-armstrong-is-halfhand/

 

A little spoilerish picture from tonight's Scream Awards on Spike TV

Spoiler: lol love Cersei's breasticles..

 

I honestly have no idea how that picture constitutes a spoiler.

Unless an alternate dimesnion Ned Stark from a modernized, urban version of Westeros is going to show up in season two and start fondling his secretary on the Iron Thorne, in which case I apologize for spoiling everyone.

 

I'm not gonna lie, that'd be kinda awesome.

 

That's a shame. As a space nerd, I always hoped their would be a future chapter with just brief discussions of the planet's rotation to the sun and how some variable would cause the drastic changes in seasons and season length.

I always thought with the red comet stuff that Martin might get just a little more spacey in his novels to explain the weather.


*I also want a scene in the tv show where it's from space showing the planet with winter brewing and moving in the land.

 

There is no variable we know of that could cause the seasons to change the way they do in Westeros. Thousands of nerds have spent thousands of man-hours trying to model a system wherein it makes sense and nothing works without the addition of "God did it" or Magic.

 

Sorry..I had meant a spoiler for those just wanting to watch the awards without being spoiled about who won awards.

 

That would be pretty cool in a science fiction novel, and indeed, was pretty cool in The Planet of Exile, an Ursula Le Guin novel on a world with long summers and long winters and how that affects it culturally (and how the vaguely medieval-era people of the world must prepare for northern invaders).

But Ice and Fire has hints running all throughout it that a lot of the thematic stuff may be literally connected, magically. I just read the first of the Dunk and Egg series of short stories, and offhandedly a character there observes that some say the summers have been shorter since the dragons died.

We have Winter, we have Ice (as in Fire and Ice), we have the walkers, we have the Old Gods, and in the other corner we have Fire, Summer, Dragons, and R'hllor. Cold has the disaster of a wintswept landscape of zombie men, hot has the disaster of the Doom of Valyria, a burning cauldron of destruction. We have claims dragons bring magic to the world, or summer, or whatever, there's clearlly a lot of vaguely Mancihean dualism screwing around here and I'm sure it'll make sense eventually.

 

It will all make sense because the orbit of Westeros (for lack of a better name) sometimes syncs up with the orbit of a red giant that severely reduces the amount of sun/warmth in Westoros. This causes the long winters which only happens every such and such cycle.

That crazy orbit that causes the long winters is also responsible for the dead rising and "magic" increasing in use in Westeros.

See, it's all caused by "space magic."

 

This is turning into a Hal Clement fantasy novel, if that isn't too much of an oxymoron.

 

I realize this is crazy late, but ugh, Natalie Dormer? The rat-face, the Igor-eyes... Her best assets are clearly below the neck and anyone who wants to see 'em has already had their chance in the Tudors. Speaking of the Tudors, I wasn't exactly impressed with her acting there. Hopefully they'll keep her role pretty minor in the show, that casting just isn't clicking for me at all.

 

Has anyone picked up the first two issues of the Game of Thrones comic adaptation? I have to say after being disappointed with the lack luster Wheel of Time comic, the Game of Thrones comic is simply spectacular. The art is great and so is the writing...plus it's not a PG comic.

 

Well, that would certainly appeal to the folks who had the theory (at the start of the show) that Jon Snow's mom was Cersei and he was also the "black-haired baby" she told Catelyn about...

As for the length of seasons in the GoT world:

Are the long seasons isolated only to the continent of Westeros or are they all over the world?

 

Apparently they're similar in both Westeros and Essos. But we don't know what they're like south of the equator. Equatorial regions are usually warm even in the winter and equatorial agriculture can apparently support the rest of the known world during the decade-long winter.

 

There's a 6000-word excerpt from The Winds of Winter up at GRRM's website!

http://georgerrmartin.com/if-sample.html