Argent

Yeah, that was a bit of a shock to me... Also, Sansa and Ramsey? Eh. Also shocked.

No Greyjoys. Which is, in my opinion, a cut even sadder than Strong Belwas. As for Jaime and Tyrion... I don't know, I wouldn't say Jaime is being darkened by the show. Tyrion definitely looks better on screen than on page, and I am talking about his nose here. Jaime though, he was pretty consistent with the book literary up until this last episode (S05E02). You don't get the same feel for his journey to almost-heroism in the show, but it's difficult to pull off without hundreds of pages at your disposal. I wouldn't be concerned.

You may want to reupload (I recommend Imgur).

It's possible that my background as non-native English speaker is making this weird for me. I can't hear "no man" and not instinctively think of a male - so a woman killing the WK is obvious, not a surprising, but foreshadowed development of the plot.

It felt like a super cheap solutions to the problem of defeating the Witch-King. The scene only works in English and other languages where "man" and "human" or "person" are synonymous. The line itself, I suppose, is good - it's the scene, the resolution to the problem, that doesn't work for me.

The alternative is, frankly, to not have any Tyrion scenes for at least half the season. There are things that need to happen with Dany, and Tyrion can't be there, not yet. There are no good solutions here.

Really? I always thought it's one of the worst ones...

Maybe. Maybe not. I don't like discussing speculations much because, well, they are speculations. I will, however, disagree with your choice of a tag. Considering how rarely they are used, and how obvious they are in the list topics, I would highly prefer a more general tag (e.g. [speculation] instead of [Random Speculation]). But this is discussion for a different place and time.

Oh, it's today? Time to reminisce! First, I have to remark on the date itself - one day before my birthday. Considering my level of fanboyism (and depending on whom you listen to, my personal physical resemblance to Brandon), I find this amusing. Now, what could I talk about? At first I was more than a little disdainful of him. The first time I hear about him was when I saw the announcement that he was going to be finishing The Wheel of Time. I read his now infamous eulogy, thought it was well-written, and promptly forgot about him... for a few years, at least. Well, didn't forget as much as actively ignored him since, well, who was this kid (an at that time, he was practically a kid for the fantasy genre) who was going to be finishing the grand series of the great Robert Jordan? I didn't want to read him because I didn't want to be disappointed in him until I got my hands on The Gathering Storm. A few months before TGS came out, however, I changed my mind. Figured that I'll be stuck with Sanderson for a few books at least, might as well get a feel for his style before TGS. I picked up Elantris, and boy, was that the best decision I had ever made in my reading career! As is often the case with people of strong conviction who change their mind, I did a full 180 and landed so firmly in Camp Brandon, people were practically using me as a flag pole there! From there on it's the standard story. I found the annotations (pretty early too), they led me here, and here led me the truth behind Hoid. It's been deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole since then. I think the first time I saw Brandon live was during the tour for A Memory of Light, though I wasn't active on the forums until maybe the Steelheart release. Naturally I was completely flabbergasted back then - I still get a little flustered when I meet him, but these days I can at least get my questions out. It's been a remarkable amount of fun these past not-quite-ten years. Fantasy is changing, and even if it's not Brandon who started the change (and it might actually very well be him), he is definitely one of the biggest players in this. That alone would make it worth being an early adopter. P.S. Looks like Brandon was in the area exactly two years ago and I snapped a photo with him then. That's at least three ways April 21 is significant for the two of us, if you are counting. Coincidence? I think not!

Slow start is nothing new in Game of Thrones. I myself am happy with it - it's quickly departing from the books, which means I'll be able to watch it and remain relatively free of spoilers for Winds of Winter, because with so many changes I wouldn't know what's canon and what's not. As this point I am most curious about Sansa's story. She is departing the most, and so I know the least about her - plus she is going places I don't want her to go. Brienne getting rejected by both her and Arya was gut-wrenching and also a little funny. Podrick is still pure gold. Jaime and Bronn, I want to magically get a spinoff series about them traveling around Westeros. Cersei... I don't understand why people enjoy or like her. Her story is just not interesting to me. I know where the books take her, and I am interested in seeing that, but her plot is just meh overall. Maybe it's all the politics...

It's something that comes up frequently during events. Theoryland has a few of his answers.

Are we not going to talk about how the title of this topic practically screams sexual innuendo? EDIT: Not that I object. Just sayin'.

Huh. I liked it, but nowhere near as much as I thought I would. I found it good, but not amazing. Here are some assorted musings: Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock) did, for the most part, an amazing job portraying a blind person. The way he would stare, often slightly off where he is supposed to be looking, is what sold me on it. For most of the season he walked too confidently, I thought, but he got the innerving stare perfectly, and that's what mattered to me. This being said, I wasn't sold on how they portrayed his... Daredevil senses. I didn't get a feeling that he is a blind man with super-heightened senses. I felt like he was a regular, seeing, man with good fighting skills. I mean, there wasn't much uniqueness in his fighting style, nothing to make me go "Oh, he couldn't have done that if he relied mostly on sight!" Yeah, they had a few scenes where this came into play, but I thought it should've been a much bigger deal. And speaking of things that disappointed me, Fisk's love life. I did not want or need the dating life of a crime lord in my superhero show. I can see why they did it, but it wasn't done in a way that was interesting to me. Still speaking of things that disappointed me, I didn't like about half of the flashbacks. Maybe more. They were kind of... just meh. You know which flashback wasn't meh though? Matt & Foggy in college. I will watch an entire show about Matt and Foggy in college, just having the best chemistry ever, always, forever. Those scenes may have made episode 11 my favorite. Second best thing - Stick. Maybe a little cliched, maybe a little too convenient (I imagine he is a part of the comics?), but I liked him. Another good thing the show did, Matt getting his posterior handed to him frequently and repeatedly. Good! He is no Thor, or the Hulk, or the Black Widow - he is a city kid who knows kung fu martial arts. Superheroes don't start off at a place where they crack names and take skulls. They get there by being on the receiving end of all that for a while. Karen Page? Loved her. All of her. Foggy Nelson? Not so much. He wasn't outright annoying, and he didn't quite end up with Karen (which the stereotype would've required), but he didn't quite win me. I don't know why. Claire I-am-the-only-person-with-common-sense Temple? Her middle name says it all. Oh, and going back to Matt's supernatural senses. That part where he smelled a guy's cologne from three floors away? This scene bothers the life out of me. I don't think it's physically possible to do that, no matter how good of an olfactory sense you have. The reason you can smell things is because molecules from the thing you are smelling get detected by receptors in your nose (so when you smell poop, it's because there are poop molecules in your nose. You are welcome.) So, with the cologne guy being three floors away, with presumably little inter-floor air circulation, and walls, and all those things between his cologne cloud and Matt's nose... I don't think it's possible for those molecules to even get there. I was looking into the math required to check this but got distracted... So that's it. I would probably give it a 7.5/10, maybe 8.

They are so very very different...

Slowly making my way through The Last Continent. It started off a little heavier than the previous Rincewind books, and I am a little busy these days, but after how good Interesting Times was, I have high hopes. At some point I will probably need to take a break from the Discworld and read Peter V. Brett's The Skull Throne. But that's in the future.

Well, he did, just not into a voidform. Eshonai's interlude implied that the process is not entirely forced on the Listeners - they have to, at least initially, agree to the bond.

*sigh* See what you've done? I am now compelled to link to the World of Warcraft paladin armor set known as Judgment. As well as this.

Good info! I want to say something about the Unmade bit, but I don't know what... my thoughts can't seem to coalesce properly.

I play less than I would like to. My friends kind of suck, but I hope that now that I've moved into a house, I can set up a regular gaming gig going. As for the games themselves, I love Pandemic. For shorter sessions, The Resistance (though it turns out I am a much better loyalist than spy) or Avalon are tons of fun. I've been meaning to find some people and play The Forbidden Island / The Forbidden Desert, but that's in the future still.

Yes, but he would either overengineer it or have his drones do it for him. I've got to say though, I am excited about Gemma infiltrating the "Real Shield" and using some weird science to pass a message to Fitz because she knows he is the only other person around who can decode it. Those two have been at each other's throats for way too long...

I guess I ought to update this before I get a backlog again. Faust Eric is done. I expected it to be worse than it actually was. Reading Interesting Times now, it feels like a step up. The plot is tighter at least.

They read very easily and lightly. I am not a very fast reader - just above average, I think - and each books takes me (according to my Kindle) somewhere between 5 and 6 hours.

We should, of course, keep in mind that the Bands might not be the bracers,

You've been on quite the adventure - welcome to the forums, where all is good, everyone is safe, and nothing is stolen. Except your time, but we try to give something back, even if it's just a "Sorry" note.

[Link to Tor's blog] Here's the blurb, first: It sounds to me like the Bands of Mourning are the atium rings Vin ripped away from the Lord Ruler. And now the cover art, again for reference (or if you don't like external links or something...):