It's Less Than A Month Away...

...the second season of Game of Thrones! This video was too fun not to share.

This doesn't mean that I'm not still waiting for the next book in the Song of Ice & Fire series, but I'll take HBO's wonderful adaptation of the series in the meantime.

Did you know my dad didn't like my sister or I to watch the Simpsons when I was younger?


(Well of course you didn't know until I told you, duh!)


But it apparently had something to do with the show's morals (or lack thereof).

Fun Little Mashup

Thanks to Cal at Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool for bringing this to my attention!

Although I believe they took inpsiration from the newest verion of My Little Ponies rather than the classic Pony look, I'll forgive them for the sheer fun of the picture. I won't get into a rant of my hatred for the "funhouse-mirror-looking Ponies" they provide for today's youth, rest assured I could rant, oh yes.

Geek Girls Love HBO's "A Game of Thrones"

The Doll-House was full of geeks this weekend.

Sunday was, you guess it! the premier of HBO's adaptation of George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.

I invited my nerd herd to join us in watching the premier, since here at the Doll-House we have HBO and a fairly large flatscreen (I think it's plenty big; but according to many of my nerd herd, it could be bigger). The Big B and I got hooked on HBO when we were fortunate enough to live with the cable guy. When all that cable stuff is free it's hard to stay away from it. Of course when I heard that GRR's series was being made into an HBO show, I patted myself on the back for having the good foresight to become addicted to HBO.

We had several couples come over and while the living room got fairly crowded, we all could sit and watch with enjoyment the opening episode of what has now become my new favorite obsession.

I don't want to spoil anything if you haven't seen it...but they did a tremendous job!

While we debated whether the actress playing Cersei was pretty enough, whether the Lannisters were flaxen-haired enough, and whether the child actors chosen to play the Stark children were too old or not, overall the mood was that it was an awesome start.

The fear with translating any book to film is that inevitably, things will be left out. With a series my hope is always that there is more "time" for all the really important and fun elements to remain faithful to the written word. I have been especially leery since watching the travesty that is The Legend of the Seeker, a TV show based upon one of my favorite series of books, The Sword of Truth.

The actor playing Richard isn't big enough to be Richard, but the woman who

plays Kahlan is fairly spot-on except for her blue eyes (they should be green like mine!)



Don't get me wrong, the show is decent. I like the choreography of the fight scenes, and it's killer that Kahlan kicks equal ass in them. If you've never read The Sword of Truth books it would be just fine. From the first episode, the series demolishes what the written series was actually about. It may say it has Richard, Kahlan, Zedd, Cara and other favorite characters, but they're not the characters I grew to love while reading the books. Do yourself a favor--watch the show, THEN read the books. If you read the books first, stay the hell away or you might find yourself having to buy a new TV after you smashed the one where Legend of the Seeker was just playing.

My hopes were much, much higher for HBO. I am an avid fan of True Blood, the HBO series based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. While not everything on the TV show was exactly like in the books and lately they've done some things with Sookie's fairy heritage that's irked me, I have to say they've done better at remaining true to the characters and world Charlaine Harris built than any book-to-screen translation I've seen since Peter Jackson's LOTR (and I'm still a little PO'd that Tom Bombadil didn't make the cut).

So I was really hoping that HBO wouldn't disappoint me with Game of Thrones, because while I love Sookie Stackhouse, epic fantasy is my bread-and-butter and to see this epic fantasy series trashed would make me sadder than someone stealing someone else's half-eaten Subway sandwich.

It didn't disappoint (much).

Maybe I'm too much of a stickler...is it possible for fans to be more passionate than the creator? I have to think that GRRM is okay with changes and things left out from his original books. I've never been involved with translating a novel to the screen and I'm sure there's all kinds of tricky things to figure out that causes stuff to be changed or left out from the original.

I'm probably being too harsh. My anxiety that viewers who haven't read the Song of Ice and Fire series may not "get" some of the scenes is most likely overkill. Who cares if the Night's Watch deserter wasn't up in a tree when his companions were killed? So Daenerys doesn't show the Dothraki people her horsemanship skills when Drogo presents the white filly to her. Will that change the way her character is perceived throughout the show?

Probably not. It remains to be seen how the rest of the episodes will showcase Daenerys and the rest of the characters in Westeros and beyond.

Lest you think I only have negative things to say about the premier, I want to assure that the percentage of what I drooled over versus what my bookworm inner self twitched over was strongly in favor of drooling.

The way the Wall was depicted? Exactly how I imagined it, only better!
The Iron Throne (even though we really didn't see it in the premier) was perfection. I had never been able to picture this in my mind's eye (entirely my fault, not George's!) and seeing it on the screen was a treat.
The dialogue and plot points weren't twisted beyond recognition, and in some cases were exactly word for word.
The opening credits was really neat--I liked the clockwork-like way the different cities on the map of Westeros were showcased.

I think everyone in the house was tempted to say the lines along with the show when Jaime Lannister stands in front of the tower window at the very end of the premier.

"The things I do for love"

*SIGH*

Now we have to wait a WEEK for the next episode? That's my remaining anxiety. I've decided not to worry about what little things have been altered, since the majority is better than I could have hoped for.

Not everyone loved the show however, as evidenced by this review in the New York Times.

I saw this after visiting Geek With Curves and reading her reaction to the article. Amy and her 70+ commentors put it well. I won't add much to what they've already eloquently said.

There are plenty of women out there who love so-called "boy fiction" and will watch this new show, not because of any "illictiness" or gratuitous sex, but rather because we're rabid fans and are excited to see Westeros come alive on the screen where before it lived only in our imaginations.

And that, my dear Ms. Bellafonte, is perhaps where you miss out the most. It is clear that what imagination you have is limited, as you are unable to conceive that there are women out there who do love swords and socerery fiction just because you haven't met one personally.

Gee, I wonder why. With a mind as open as that, if it was a parachute, you most certainly would be ker-splatted on the ground with how well it works.

The gender ratio of those at my house, excited to view this premier, was evenly split. Three out of the four women had read the entire series, and three out of four men had too.

I'd say those are pretty even odds!