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In It For The Tank posted:http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/LA_Con_IV_Anaheim_CA_August_23_27 what's surprising isn't that GRRM is so out of touch with what people think is Cool and Hip but that he managed to write a decent 3 book arc in the first place
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# ¿ Nov 9, 2013 21:09 |
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# ¿ May 15, 2024 03:57 |
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at least the show didn't have Vargo Hoat and the painful to read lisping dialogue
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# ¿ Nov 16, 2013 00:28 |
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Shoehead posted:He shoots his awful father right after throttling his missus in his bed so hopefully that episode will leave people feeling confused as all heck. Some people think the showrunners wont go for the Shae strangling given how much development they've given her and have made her a much more substantive character, and perhaps the desire to keep Tyrion an unblemished "good" character, and instead Tyrion will find her dead in Tywin's bed or something. I'm not so sure, they were certainly ballsy enough to kill a pregnant lady, we'll see. But they've definitely changed some things so her betrayal may be different in some way.
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# ¿ Nov 18, 2013 01:01 |
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AStrangeDuelist posted:GoT isn't a bad show. Yet anyway. It'll get worse after this season. I find GRRM is a short story writer at heart. Read the prologue/epilogue chapters, and some of the one-off chapters in books 4 and 5, they're fun they are a joy to read, and you can tell GRRM enjoys writing them. Some of his main character POVs read like even GRRM thinks its a slog to get through. I think he merely got bored with the main storyline itself. Maybe he should have given it a break for a book and just did some fully fleshed out Iron Island/Dorne stuff, or something, I dunno.
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# ¿ Dec 13, 2013 01:51 |
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OhYeah posted:Who would you like as your king though? Renly and Robert were both loved by the people around them, including their former enemies. Stannis was little liked outside his immediate circle of friends. Can a king really be a king if he has only justice and duty behind and not the support of his people? The best king would be if the radical peasant rebellion symbolized through the religious radicalism of the sparrows and High Septon would succeed and establish a Republic of the Seven, washing the aristocracy away
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2013 00:49 |
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Cornwind Evil posted:Possible. We'll never know until the next book comes-here's where one inserts the usual joke-but Martin did it before with the Red Wedding, where he had to make it so terrible and ugly and utterly driving home how Robb's mistakes due to being young and how he was raised and how he was thrown into this when he wasn't yet sixteen and how he was the most traditionally heroic needed to be punished so terribly that Martin damaged his own narrative to drive it home. He could have dialed back what happened there considerably and still put forth the same message and accomplished the same goal. I'm not so sure. By the time the Red Wedding rolls around you should understand the North's hopes for winning the rest of the war are completely smashed. You (the reader) can hold on to whatever semblance of hope you want, but it actually takes something like the Red Wedding to wake you out of that dream, they're vastly outnumbered, they're between a rock (the Ironborn) and a hard place (the South), it's really only your belief in the ability of Good to overcome Evil that the reader believes they have a shot. Tywin's actually right in that this solution prevents further bloodshed, in the long (medium? Who knows, perhaps the new Stannis-Bolton war will lead to much more bloodshed) term. Killing Jon is just stupid though. At this point the reader knows he has plot armor, and this doesn't prove a thing. Jon is going to be resurrected somehow, and GRRM is merely dulling his own knife when he continuously "kills" characters only to bring them back. I suppose its supposed to be a lesson to Jon but its still silly.
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# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 03:06 |
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Cornwind Evil posted:True, but the whole thing is, if you're going to play the gritty moral relativism card, then it has to be balanced. If 'Good' has to be punished for making mistakes because of its morality, then 'Evil' has to be equally punished for their mistakes and that really hasn't happened. Littlefinger's still in a prime position, as is Varys (though whether he could be considered 'evil' is very arguable). For all we know, Ramsay and Roose in a greater position of power than ever. Joffrey got killed by a Littlefinger power play instead before all his crimes could 'catch up' to him. The only one who's really been destroyed by her mistakes is Cersai, and since that's due to a bunch of lunatic religious zealots that she's handed a bunch of power to, that's just trading in one set of bad circumstances for another. As it is, the series reads as 'Good losers, Evil winners' as the way of things. Now, again, this could be because we still have two books left to-insert that joke again here-and all the mistakes are about to come into play there, but as is, the whole thing comes off as warped cheating. Yeah, I feel bad about introduce 'good' and 'evil' into this because its a poor dichotomy for the series. GRRM definitely robs the moments of karmic justice of their catharsis. The Mountain dies, yes, but only after brutally killing Oberyn and damning Tyrion. Same can be said of Tywin and Joffrey. I don't think GRRM is fully nihilistic or, he like, favors evil though. It's just that he doesn't want the reader to savor these moments. Perhaps we shouldn't celebrate the death of a 14 year old boy, no matter how awful he is? I dunno. It's clear that the Bolton's aren't going to last too long, even if whats in the Pink Letter is true. The North wont suffer them for much longer, and it shows that at least some sadistic excesses aren't tolerated.
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# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 07:32 |
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Aurain posted:D+D clearly do not know the books if they thought omitting Strong Belwas making GBS threads in the middle of a battlefield after he just murdered a dude was a good idea. Now we can all look forward to Barristan the Bold taking off his trousers and laying a big fat steaming one after slaying Meereen's champion
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# ¿ Dec 17, 2013 00:25 |
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Show also confirmed/revealed something that's been theorized for a while: Lannister goldmines are dry, they're officially broke
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# ¿ May 5, 2014 17:16 |
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Would it help GRRM if he released the next book in serial fashion? He has so many drat POVs and they have such disparate story lines he may as well release them separately now. Plus he's already given us ~1/5 of a book with his sample chapters.
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# ¿ May 16, 2014 02:54 |
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So GRRM is gonna have Melisandre burn Shireen alive huh? That sucks
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# ¿ May 19, 2014 16:56 |
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I refuse to believe the show runners watch Aiden Gillen throw on his husky voice, give the camera his dead fish eyes, hold his hands in an awkward triangle and talk outside the corner of his mouth and think "This is Good poo poo. Keep doing this"
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# ¿ May 21, 2014 17:03 |
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Hunky Joe posted:My show watching friend is calling Oberyn dying because Reason C. Should have tipped more people off before getting too excited about Oberyn. It's poor narrative convention to have a character encounter the same challenge and overcome it in the same way. It's also poor narrative convention to write 2 books where nothing happens, but here we are
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# ¿ May 28, 2014 18:08 |
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GURM really does hold some weird biologically essentialist beliefs, like that Ramsay is a complete monster at least partially because he's the product of a rape.
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# ¿ May 29, 2014 22:44 |
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Dont worry yall. He had at least 168 pages as of February 2013. Now he only needs, I dunno, five times that before the end of next season, woops Its all good
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2014 07:32 |
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Gregor, do you even lift, bro?
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# ¿ Jun 3, 2014 03:21 |
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Season Three Trip Report I thought the Red Wedding was shot...oddly. Some of the blocking was really weird. The best bit of it was the shot of all the Freys stabbing all the attendants because I felt they captured the crazed frenzy of it all. The rest of it just seemed weird, like Roose coming in stage left and exiting stage right after stabbing Robb. Talisa getting stabbed in the belly was a nice shock though. Arya almost freeing Grey Wind was a nice change, it really struck home how full of hope, anti-climactic and tragic the Stark rebellion was. And Walder Frey's actor is awesome chewing scenery the whole time.
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# ¿ Jun 12, 2014 18:50 |
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Intel&Sebastian posted:Warmed my cockles anyways, thanks! That exchange between Brienne and the Hound when she asks "So, are you going to protect her" "Aye, I am" was better than any of the cut iconic dialogue book readers have whinged about
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# ¿ Jun 16, 2014 23:55 |
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I love that after dozens of years he still has to delay having major characters meet because he clearly has no idea what to do with them when they get together. Tyrion and Dany? Seemingly destined to combine forces but... Well they'll spend another book apart because it's too hard to actually write them together
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# ¿ Jun 28, 2014 00:21 |
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The only explanation for the Pink Letter that makes sense is that Stannis is purposefully faking his death in collusion with Manderly. That's why he tells that knight to keep pursuing mercenaries even if he hears that Stannis has died. Likely they smash the Frey force, give Manderly the magic sword and convince Ramsay he's won for the minute, before pulling off a Trojan horse maneuver. Or he's dead. Which would be a bummer.
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# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 22:07 |
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jsoh posted:Ramsay deffo didnt write the letter. He hates the word bastard and his writing is noted for being really lovely and there is no flesh in the envelope, also there is no way newly Ramsay Bolton would have not sealed the letter with his sigil I've never found this all that convincing. Sure the letter doesn't have all the hallmarks of a Ramsay letter but I just don't think Ramsay has a standardized version of the way he writes letters. I chock up the lack of a seal on the letter to Ramsay being in a rush to send it and doesn't really care about the pleasantries. He calls Jon "bastard" a bunch because he wants to lord over his legitimized status to someone he knows would feel the sting of being a bastard. I can't imagine anyone else can really capture his "voice" except really Theon, and there's no motive for Theon to write the letter. Maybe someone else wrote it? I dunno and we'll never find out (because the books never coming out, lol)
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# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 23:35 |
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We haven't seen Stannis really have to "bend" yet and I think when it comes it's going to deal with Melisandre. The show has already hinted that Melisandre may be interested in sacrificing Shireen, that may be the time when Stannis breaks with her and forges a new path, or when he gives in and goes full Evil Mannis. Given how the show has insisted on giving him a dark menacing angle, I'm guessing the latter. Which sucks because the books have shown him to have a more flexible, pragmatic, and just side that he initially appears to have.
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# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 17:45 |
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The whole "Manderly plays Stannis to make Rickon King in the North" is the "Great Northern Conspiracy" right? I just can't see it. The North has already suffered immensely from one failed independence movement, why would they try another one so soon? And this time they'd be opposed by both Baratheon and Lannister/Tyrell forces. They're almost militarily exhausted, that's what makes the battle of Winterfell kind of sad and pathetic as it is, it's going to be armies of a couple thousand fatigued, beleaguered men duking it out. It's nothing compared to the tens of thousands that Robb commanded or the 100,000 or whatever that was the battle of Blackwater. Though I suppose if this time the North rises and stays above Moat Cailin they don't have to worry much right? Nobody can apparently get past that causeway except from the North.
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# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 00:44 |
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They'll never get t the trial by combat because Aegon and the Golden Company will take King's Landing, murder Tommen, and Cersei will flee to Casterly Rock or wherever She still has to see all her children die before she goes. If Arianne and Dorne team up with Aegon...wouldn't that mean they have to dispense with Myrcella as well? Can't have any pretenders sticking around.
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# ¿ Jul 8, 2014 18:45 |
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Lycus posted:It doesn't help that currently Littlefinger's big scheme seems really small-time next to everything else that's going on. I mean, if he was trying to marry Sansa off to maybe-fake-Aegon or Euron or something, that would be one thing, but nobody cares about Harry the stupid Heir. That's not to say a much more interesting scheme isn't coming in Book 6. Small time? He's planning on revealing Sansa at her wedding and that would give him de facto control of 3 kingdoms, the North, the Vale and the Riverlands, as he's Lord Paramount of the Trident. Of course the North and the Riverlands are ravaged by war, and he doesn't seem to be following what's going on with Stannis in the North, but still, that's hardly small time.
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# ¿ Jul 8, 2014 21:31 |
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I'm less anxious that he's gonna die and more disappointed the show is going to wrap up the series because their invented material has been uneven at best, sometimes brilliant, other times extremely bad and bewildering. We're gonna get an ending but it'll be rushed and empty and weird
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# ¿ Jul 9, 2014 20:30 |
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Shouldn't his publisher care if he gets TWOW out pre-season 6 or not? It'll be a massive run away best seller regardless, but it would be significantly less so if all the major plot points are "spoiled" before hand. If TWOW comes out in the next year, people that have never picked up a book before would line up to find out what's going to happen, while if it comes out later many would be satisfied with what they got in the TV show. His publishers are the only ones that have a real material interest in the time frame of the book release.
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# ¿ Jul 9, 2014 23:43 |
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Octopode posted:The actual part was in a reply to that tweet, seen here: Well I appreciate his response https://mobile.twitter.com/Analharrier27/status/492662241284472832
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# ¿ Jul 25, 2014 21:33 |
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:I tried not to argue that the two opposing sides are "700 page rulebook" and "". I think it's important that the author at the very least knows all the limits and rules, even if they're not spelled out explicitly, because that will translate out into the work. I dislike the idea of magic being so mysterious that the reader won't ever be able to figure out what's possible, because everything is possible. I think there *are* rules to magic in ASOIAF, at least one rule anyway: it comes at a price. All the fire magic requires a sacrifice, or a losing of oneself. Beric loses some of himself, Stannis gives some of himself to Melisandre for the shadow assassin, and the numerous human sacrifices, including Dany's inadvertent sacrifice of MMD. Magic seems to work much more like a deal with the Devil in western literature than "magic" works in normal fantasy. It takes a heavy price and it doesn't always deliver as intended.
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# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 16:41 |
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Given that it seems to be set in Deepwood Motte and involves the Ironborn at some level, there's a good chance we get some Mannis action. Options: 1. Grind Teeth 2. Set Jaw 3. Do Nothing
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# ¿ Sep 1, 2014 00:40 |
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The Berzerker posted:yeah really, if Stephen King can put out 2-3 800+ pagers of mediocre crap per year you'd think GRRM could do at least 1 every few years You misunderstand. GRRM isn't driven by admiration and the promise of cultural immortality. He's driven purely by the contempt he has for us.
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 20:06 |
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The show has already killed off a character still alive in the books, like, uh.. fan favorite Jojen Reed. I guess this means Bronn's gonna die, because I don't really see him playing a huge role even in the books and he's hoping around with Jaime. Thats lame.
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# ¿ Feb 17, 2015 05:24 |
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Aegon sucks because you know GRRM didn't come up with him until at least 2005, and he's struggling to come up with new material that isn't actually Dany coming to Westeros, for some reason? I think it's very possible he hasn't come up with an endgame he's satisfied with and is kicking his tires on whatever else buys him time. Sure you can come up with small circumstantial evidence tha GRRM was planning Aegon earlier, but it's intentionally vague stuff that kept his options open for any weird future stuff he planned. It's lazy and insults the reader to be honest. Bless the show for getting rid of that nonsense and cutting to Varys just outright supporting Dany's claim. Too bad the show has...a less than stellar record on inventing material.
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# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 20:19 |
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Lady Bureaucrazy posted:All this talk about show-only storylines, how has no one mentioned Ros? Ros was an interesting idea, it gave the tv watcher a neat way to tie all these disparate characters together while being a quasi social climber. Then they abruptly ended that and killed her. I liked the conversation Littlefinger gave her that was chilling as hell. But yeah, mostly a misfire there . Wasn't GRRM so impressed with her character he said he was planning on writing her into the books? Lol
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# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 00:52 |
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Elman posted:God they did a poor job with Littlefinger. Most viewers probably didn't even notice the Jon Arryn reveal in the Eyrie, too. He's just some creep that's really into Sansa. They've completely botched Littlefinger and it's shocking because they've done such a good job with nearly every other major character and have a great actor in Aiden Gillian. He varies between "stupidly obvious supervillain" and "extra creepy pedophile" without any charm or grace. It's hard to tell if it's the writing or Gillian hamming it up unnecessarily or what.
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# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 19:28 |
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Intel&Sebastian posted:I always felt like the Jon Arryn reveal only really had two purposes: Making Littlefinger look more puppet master-ish and adding yet another "Maybe we should blame the whole thing on THIS" event. I felt like it was really stupid when I read it and a bit of an unnecessary "hah! This obvious thing is actually a twist!" Like, why would the Lannister's act really suspicious the whole time, and aid in covering it up by killing Arryn's squires and poo poo if this is the case? It made sense for this all to be resolved in AGOT with Jaime/Cersei preserving their secret and saving their skins. Sure Littlefinger has his motivations, its just a little unnecessary.
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# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 18:29 |
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TK-42-1 posted:If you found out someone might know about your big secret and then suddenly and mysteriously died, wouldn't you want to go ahead and try to tie up any loose ends? Even if you didn't know how he died exactly, it's still a good opportunity to fix the leak. Sure, but you'd be drat sure to check up on who *actually* killed him. The Lannisters keeping Littlefinger around forever, letting him gently caress poo poo up constantly and eventually even kill their king, is hard to explain away.
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# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 19:16 |
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There's literally nothing GRRM can come up with that would surprise any reader. Every corner has been researched, every ludicrous family combination looked at, any supernatural event thought about. Don't try to shock anyone and actually write something that makes sense. But he won't cuz he's sour.
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# ¿ Apr 3, 2015 21:56 |
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Just finished the 2nd episode. So they uh, they really just completely copy+pasted Robb Stark's thing with the Karstark's with Danaerys didn't they? Thats...thats really weird. Jaime deciding to go to Dorne felt like a videogame mission briefing or something. I'll second people saying everything feels pushed to the extremes and parodies of themselves. Any pretense of subtlety is gone. All the interactions are...weird and hollow and lack engagement? Especially the Dorne stuff. I like that Winterfell has the Bolton sigil on it. I...like that Bronn is in it.
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# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 06:52 |
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# ¿ May 15, 2024 03:57 |
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After watching the first 3 episodes its safe to say the show got appreciably worse this year. We're getting out ending, and its gonna be fuckin bad television
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# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 21:47 |