no episode this week hate waiting

Lilo, will it be revealed as to why the Imp's lover ex-whore testified against him and broke his heart? I think someone got to her and threatened her life? Cersai?

Well... perhaps. It was revealed in detail in the books. If you remember the last time Tyrion saw her he could not convince her to leave or that her life was in danger. So he said some very ugly things to her (which he didn't believe) in order to get her to depart and hopefully save her life. Unfortunately Tyrion was so convincing that Shae believed him.

So she certainly has a motive to hurt Tyrion.

Tyrion arranged with Bronn to put Shae on a boat overseas but as we know from the last episode Bronn has switched allegiance to Cersei/Tywin. So either Bronn turned Shae over to the Lannisters or they took her but in any event she's back. Likely Tywin and/or Cersei made Shae an offer she couldn't refuse. Remember that Tywin threatened to hang the next prostitute he found Tyrion with. And Tywin doesn't make idle threats..

Thanks, Lilo. I knew I could fount on you for a good answer. Really enjoying this season.

Dinklage should win something for this work here. I wonder if British people find his accent convincing.

Agreed. Dinklage has been a bright spot of this entire series!

No problem Mark! There are some rather significant events still to occur in the final 3 episodes. I will (and I hope other book readers do as well) do my best not to spoil them.

hahaha smash the beatles such a great episode

“Game of Thrones” has whacked “The Sopranos” off its ratings perch.

As the fantasy drama nears the end of its fourth season, HBO reports that “Game of Thrones” is now the most popular series in the network’s history. Episodes of the show, which first air on Sunday nights, have an average gross audience of 18.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

The previous high, set by the 2002 season of “The Sopranos,” was an average gross audience of 18.2 million viewers per episode. Season three of “Game of Thrones” had an average gross audience of 14.4 million viewers per episode...

http://variety.com/2014/tv/ratings/its-o...ver-1201214357/

Hell of a way to end season 4. I'd put the episode in the top five of the entire series so far.

I thought the season was good. But the best source material has already been used. Next season will see much more non-canon creations.

The past two season finales have been fantastic! They kill of a major character, and then make you spend almost a year wondering WTF will happen next!

a whole year now till its back on hurry up HBO

Very much enjoyed this season. Can't wait until it comes back!

George Martin discusses the season finale and how he wrote his character motivations WARNING. There is some discussion of book:show differences in the article. And in the comments following the article there are of course the usual number of ****s who want to talk about what's yet to come. So if you only want information from the show and don't care about the author's take, well you know what to do...

I just read that each episode of the show costs an average of $6.2 million to make.

Since so many of you are fans of Game of Thrones (I am not), you might want to listen to Jackie Evancho's cover of Rains of Castamere on her latest CD on the web. I just listened to it and it is one remarkable rendering for a 14 yer old.

jayus serious money,but then again the cast is huge for it, read that seville in spain is being used to film scenes as DORNE

George Martin has a helpful message for those worried that he might die before finishing the story.

eh.. loved the first thee books. The fourth is underwhelming and fifth downright bad by comparison. GRRM has to be one of the most overrated authors of this century. besides (the first 3 books of) ASOIAF he hasn't really written anything worth reading.

The television series is so far off the rails it might as well just drop the "game of thrones" title and go with something original because I don't know what they're making, but it's not "a song of ice and fire". Which isn't to say it's BAD, it's not, at this point I appreciate the fact they're cutting the ridiculous amounts of filler that made up the entirety of the last two books, but at the same time I just don't see anything worthy of the hype that it gets. The story is disjointed and all over the place there is no way you could appreciate the show on anything but a superficial level without a pretty good grasp on the source material, which they tend to ignore in far too many instances. Cutting out important story arcs and characters to fulfill the financial burdens and contain it within 10 episodes / season. Which, while understandable, just does not work for ASOIAF. I realize that monetary draw backs are an inevitability with something so sprawling and diverse, but, given that fact it just begs the question, if you can't do a faithful adaptation, why bother?

That came off way more negative than I meant. I really do enjoy the show (moreso than the last two novels, anyway)... But I just find it lacking in so many areas. Perhaps if I was not coloured by the bias of having read the books these would be non-issues, but I am.

And if anyone is an entitled twat, it's GRRM himself. Seriously. That guy has the social graces of an autistic cat. yes, george, fuck the people who made your work world famous and built an IP portfolio that you could sell for dump trucks of money to HBO (and then bitch and moan that they will finish the series you started SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO before you do). Maybe if you weren't an obese tub of 65 year old lard people wouldn't be concerned that your excessively lazy work habits that might (and by "might" I mean probably) mean you'll die before you finish at the rate you're going.

Seriously. Fuck that fat lazy fuck. I'm a fan of (some of) his writing, but he is a terribly obnoxious person.

and before some half assed fanboy comes to tell me I'm wrong here are some fatcs to consider:

- George Martin has said that if he dies before finishing the books, he will NOT allow anyone else to finish the books for him (but at least the show will, no matter how much he bitches about it).
- George has GONE ON RECORD as saying he DOES NOT write AT ALL while travelling and will ONLY write at home when he has (and I quote) "a big chunk of time". Meaning he barely writes.
- His editors have only seen a few chapters of the next book (about 150 pages IIRC) in the three years since Dance was published (His editor, Anne Groell stated this in an interview).
- He started this series almost 2 decades ago. That's right. Two decades. Some people started reading this series in the fucking 90's. Tell me that's not indicative of poor work ethic.

this slob needs a reality check and a swift kick in his fat ass.

Martin would be better off selling his secrets on doing a half-assed job for two decades and somehow getting publishers and HBO to fork over money.

$500 a head x 100 idiots per city x 50 cities = $2,500,000 before expenses.

The saddest part is, is that he wrote three amazing novels. he's been riding on their success for the better part of the last 15 years. Honestly, I think martin just wrote himself into too many corners and can't figure out a legitimate way of tying it all up. As a result, we got Dance, which became the fly in the ointment and really just exasperated the existing problem about a hundred times. He introduced so many pointless red herrings and "twists" I start to wonder if he's taking ques from M. Night Shyamalan. I feel like he just sort of got sick of writing it, doesn't know where to go, has other projects he's more interested in (wild cards, various anthologies, Dunk and Egg and not to mentioning signing off on supplementary ASOIAF map books and encyclopedias written by other people) and now has even less incentive to finish ASOIAF since HBO made him a very rich man.

He's got his "method" of creating/writing; which is fair enough. But at some point you have to come to a place where you realize you are an artist making money off your art, enough to make a decent living, that yes, you do OWE your audience at least a modicum of respect, regardless of their opinion of your health and work habits. Artists Must sacrifice to maintain their relevance; but Martin gave his own relevance a half life by selling an incomplete product to a company that will finish his story long before he's capable of doing so.

In Martin's case "sacrifice" means he needs to work more. His pace is too slow, and frankly, unprofessional. He sets his own deadlines and then fails to live up to them and then lashes out at his fans for criticizing his poor work ethic. Maybe it's time to sacrifice, George. maybe it's time to buy a laptop and write on the road, not just when you "want" to write. It'd be like me telling my boss "sorry, boss, I can only work when I want to and have a substantial amount of time to immerse myself in it. That is not today, or tomorrow, or the next day, but maybe Friday".

And then, on top of it, to do that and then sit there and bitch that HBO is going to finish your story before you do? It's just baffling. you sold your IP for millions of dollars George, fucking suck it up Princess, and write your fucking books.

Indeed. It's probably not even the same league, but take someone like Tom Clancy. Here's a guy that probably was set for life in the early 1990s on the heels of "The Hunt for Red October" and "Clear and Present Danger," yet was appreciative enough of his audience to keep writing novels and releasing them on a fairly regular 12 to 18 month cycle.

Tom Clancy was an amazingly prolific writer. George could definitely learn a thing or two from an author like that. I never read much Clancy, but I loved a lot of the movies based on his work, and some of the Rainbow Six games were awesome.

I just can't respect a guy who spits in the faces of his fans. I don't even get the logic there, it's one thing to be defensive but he is down right self destructive with his inability to cope with criticism.

He's being a douche for the sake of being a douche, like he's bigger than the novel or TV series itself. It's like we should be honored to read his works.

Had "Game of Thrones" not been on HBO (much less any other network), that attitude might be different.

The problem is he's always been a slow writer. He's not going to change at this point. It is what it is. The first three books were excellent and all came out within 2-3 years of each other. I think the Red Wedding, while evilly magnificent, was a mistake that really damaged the narrative. Combine that with no five year gap, as originally planned, and editors who've lost the ability to rein him in, and we get books that are much longer, take forever to arrive and don't impress as much.

All that said, as Martin has said art is not a democracy, so I just use the time waiting on him to finish the story to discover and enjoy many other authors, some of whom can put out a good novel in less than six years. I think Martin has lost interest in the story or more precisely lost interest in editing himself.

AGoT - 1996
ACOK - 1998
ASOS - 2000

The issue is that he ISN'T a slow writer. The first three books were hammered out in rapid succession. The first big break was between Storm and Feast (AFFC came out in 2005, five year break) and then six years between feast and Dance with the quality declining sharply between the latter three novels with each iteration.

Also Neil Gaiman argued a complete strawman and it's ridiculous his "not your bitch" argument is repeated ad nauseum. Have you read the comment Gaiman was replying to with that post? This is what the question was:

Hi Neil,

I've recently subscribed to George RR Martin's blog (http://grrm.livejournal.com/) in the hopes of getting some inside information regarding when the next "Song of Ice and Fire" book is due to be released. I love the series but since subscribing to the blog I've become increasingly frustrated with Martin's lack of communication on the next novel's publication date. In fact, it's almost as though he is doing everything in his power to avoid working on his latest novel. Which poses a few questions:

1. With blogs and twitter and other forms of social media do you think the audience has too much input when it comes to scrutinising the actions of an artist? If you had announced a new book two years ago and were yet to deliver do you think avoiding the topic on your blog would lead readers to believe you were being "slack"? By blogging about your work and life do you have more of a responsibility to deliver on your commitments?

2. When writing a series of books, like Martin is with "A Song of Ice and Fire" what responsibility does he have to finish the story? Is it unrealistic to think that by not writing the next chapter Martin is letting me down, even though if and when the book gets written is completely up to him?

Would be very interested in your insight.

Cheers
Gareth

Entitled? From that question are you led to believe that Gareth wants to chain GRRM to his chair and force him to write ASoIaF non-stop? It's a well written letter sent off to Gareth's favorite authors. I wouldn't be surprised if Gareth had spent an hour -hour and half crafting this question. Neil could have written an excellent essay about writing and the hurdles and setbacks that all writers encounter when writing their novels. The more I think about the blog post that he could have written the more disappointed I am with what he wrote. Of course he didn't write a great essay he just erected a straw man and told it that he wasn't GRRM's bitch. Tell me he isn't an asshole after reading that question...

Want an accurate, sane opinion of what an author owes to his audience? Brent Weeks countered Neil Gaiman in his own blog: http://www.scifinow.co.uk/blog/brent-weeks-opinion-column-george-rr-martin-is-not-your-bitch/

first four episodes are up now they got leaked enjoy,

:link:

http://www.primewire.ag/tv-1386995-Game-of-Thrones/season-5

Yes i saw that about the leaked episodes and i was tempted to check it out but i figured its not to much longer to wait.

Anyone think theres any way that tywin survived being shot while on "the throne"?

Lilo?!? Where the heck are you?!? Come back!