<\/p>\n
What thoughts do you have about how HBO is adapting Martin\u2019s first two novels in the Song of Ice and Fire <\/em>series?\u00a0 Here are some of mine.<\/p>\n Daenerys is justifiably one of the most popular characters in Martin\u2019s epic series The Song of Ice and Fire<\/em>.\u00a0 In the second novel in the sequence, A Clash of Kings<\/em>, one of the most memorable chapters is Daenerys\u2019 visit to the House of the Undying.\u00a0 It\u2019s a nightmarish and unforgettable episode, a great mix of Poe and Lovecraft as well as Martin, full of horror and dream-like disorientation, as the heroine risks her life by submitting to magic.\u00a0 Daenerys, an exiled princess of the House Targaryen, does so in the hopes of making the sorcerers who rule the city of Qarth support her in her quest to raise an army so she can return from exile and conquer what was taken from her and her family.\u00a0 But she knows she\u2019s risking all: she has no way of knowing whether she can trust the sorcerers, especially Pree, not to mention no way of knowing whether she can survive their magic.<\/p>\n Among fans of Martin\u2019s books and the HBO series based on them, Game of Thrones<\/em>, there\u2019s been a huge amount of chatter and hand-wringing about whether the HBO series is justified in rewriting some of its source material rather than just cutting it so that 1000+ page novels can be distilled into 8-10 hour-long TV episodes.\u00a0 It seems like the majority of comments on the Facebook Game of Thrones<\/em> pages regarding the \u201cchanges\u201d introduced by the TV production have been negative\u2014especially after Season 2 began and it was clear that the producers, directors, and writers were taking even more liberties with the text sources than they did in Season 1.\u00a0 Some of the negative comments were reasonable and thoughtful, but many were just rants verging on textual fundamentalism.\u00a0 How dare<\/em> the HBO people leave out X or change even one<\/em> plot point, snatch of dialogue, or even a tiny piece of my favorite character\u2019s clothing or armor?<\/p>\n There\u2019s been little exploration on either Song<\/em> or Thrones<\/em> fan sites (that I\u2019ve seen anyway) of the opposite issue:\u00a0 are the HBO episodes sometimes improving<\/em> the novels, especially in terms of drama and characterization?\u00a0 This is an important issue because Song of Ice and Fire<\/em> and Game of Thrones<\/em> arguably give us some of the most complex and compelling characters in all \u201cfantasy\u201d writing\u2014not excluding even Tolkien\u2019s Lord of the Rings<\/em>, a clear predecessor that Martin is both paying homage to and trying to top. \u00a0Although some have inner conflicts, Tolkien\u2019s characters by and large are easily separated into good and bad, the one obvious exception being Gollum. \u00a0Martin\u2019s characters, by contrast, can rarely be easily placed into easy moral categories.\u00a0 Martin takes us deep into the world views of a wide variety of characters, even the most \u201cevil\u201d ones, so that even if we end up hating those we must see the world through their eyes and understand how they understand why they act as they do.<\/p>\n Here’s what John Bradley\u2014who plays Samwell Tarly, Jon Snow\u2019s closest companion in the Night Watch\u2014smartly said in 2012 about Nikolaj Coster-Waldau\u2019s interpretation of Jaime Lannister, one of the \u201cvillains\u201d whom we love to hate yet can\u2019t stop watching. For Bradley, Jaime loves playing psychological games with everyone, especially his captors. He’s not just a deadly swordsman; he’s also able to attack his opponents psychologically. Jaime constantly tests them to see how he can destabilize their sense of who they are, thus giving him an opening to gain power over them. (The Kingslayer’s interactions with Catelyn and Brienne are fine examples of this.) Bradley sensibly wonders how this Lannister villain can be so secure in himself, even while trying to dismantle others\u2019 confidence.\u00a0 (See http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZQEj47gno-w&feature=youtu.be<\/a>)\u00a0 <\/p>\n Bradley’s is a great insight, to which I would only add that later in The Song of Ice and Fire<\/em> (Book 3) Jaime DOES finally reveal deeply hidden self-doubts and guilt: see his interactions with Brienne in Book 3, especially the bath scene, in which Jaime reflects on the contrast between his legendary “Kingslayer” persona and his private feelings about what he did to earn that name and who he killed. The bath scene is also one in which Jaime finally acknowledges that he admires Brienne, at least a little, and sees some kinship between himself and her; he apologizes to her and also calls her by her real name and stops addressing her as “wench”–a phrase for her that even the book’s narrator continues to favor. Brienne’s unusually vulnerable in this scene, not to mention naked, yet Jaime treats her with more respect than he ever has before–and is more reflective about his own life as well. (Jaime too is newly vulnerable and destabilized psychologically, for a reason I won’t give here, though readers of Storm of Swords<\/em> and viewers of season 3 will know what I mean.) The dynamic of Brienne’s and Jaime’s relationship is fascinating, complex, and constantly evolving in The Song of Ice and Fire<\/em> and one of many examples of how richly Martin imagines relationships between his major characters. However, here too HBO improves on the book: The bath scene between Brienne and Jaime was brilliantly rendered in Season 3’s Game of Thrones<\/em> to emphasize both characters’ new vulnerability. Jaime’s monologue in A Storm of Swords<\/em> is too long and complicated for maximum dramatic effect.<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n A strong case could be made that major characters such as Ygritte, Theon, Stannis, Cersei, Tywin, Sansa, Daenerys, and Arya (my favorite) all<\/em> have more expressive dialogue and more deeply explored motivations in the HBO TV series than in the books.\u00a0 The HBO characterizations of these wonderful personalities build on Martin\u2019s books but they also take more risks and explore these key characters more profoundly.\u00a0 This difference is in part caused by the superb actors playing these parts, but it\u2019s also a function of how these characters have been reconceived and transformed by brilliant writing and directing that isn\u2019t afraid to rethink who Martin\u2019s characters are and what they might mean.<\/p>\n (I haven\u2019t mentioned the obvious other major character, Tyrion Lannister, because he is a superb character in the novel, fully realized and unforgettable, in part because\u2014as many, including his creator, have said\u2014Tyrion is a modern person in what\u2019s essentially a medieval world. Peter Dinklage\u2019s portrayal of Tyrion is stellar too, worth all the Emmys he may get, but here\u2019s a case where I would NOT want to argue that the HBO character is better than in the novels.)<\/p>\n With some of the changed portraits, such as Daenerys in Qarth or the characterization of Theon\u2019s inner conflicts and self-hate, the HBO series mixes careful editing with really smart invention.\u00a0 In other cases, such as those scenes in Season 2 between Tywin Lannister and Arya, the writers invented entirely new scenes and dialogue\u2014but all in the service of brilliantly characterizing both these protagonists more thoroughly.<\/p>\n (It complicated our view of Tywin as a villain to see him testing his new servant girl yet unable to stop himself from admiring how she\u2019s smartly making a way for herself in a tough world.\u00a0 It was equally fascinating watching Arya maneuvering on a razor\u2019s edge as she tried to be respectful while fending off Tywin\u2019s attempts to ferret out more about her.\u00a0 Plus, visually the scenes were stunning\u2014all shadows and shafts of sunlight, with powerful closeups and pauses.\u00a0 Arya parried each of Tywin\u2019s queries as if she were fencing, and when she made a mistake she quickly shielded herself.\u00a0 The swordmaster Syrio Forel taught Arya better than he knew!\u00a0 By paring down the large number of plot complications involving Arya in disguise having to work for new \u201cmasters\u201d in Clash of Kings<\/em> and reimagining these as Arya having to work for one of the most ruthless of the Lannisters, the HBO revisions better kept the focus on Arya\u2019s wily resourcefulness in the face of adversity.\u00a0 Yes, some things were lost by all the cuts, but much was gained.)<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n OK, enough digressions.\u00a0 Let\u2019s explore a few reasons why the HBO Daenerys (Dany) might be even better drawn than the Dany in the novel.\u00a0 I\u2019ll take as my test case the climactic moment in Season 2, episode 10, called \u201cValor Morghulis.\u201d\u00a0 One of the most stunning scenes in a episode filled with great moments occurred when Daenerys puts her life at risk to get her stolen dragons back by entering the House of the Undying knowing she\u2019ll be attacked by sorcery.<\/p>\n The \u201cValor Morghulis\u201d episode\u2014which got the highest viewership of any Game of Thrones<\/em> episode so far, either in Season 1 or Season 2 [see the Ratings section of Wikipedia\u2019s entry on <\/a>Game of Thrones<\/a><\/em>] \u2014was written by the Game of Thrones<\/em> producers, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and directed by the series co-producer, Alan Taylor.\u00a0 Whether they discussed with Martin the changes they introduced I don\u2019t know, but Martin\u2019s been loosely involved in the entire series and it\u2019s hard to believe that Benioff and Weiss didn\u2019t share with him at least some of their ideas about how to do the season\u2019s final episode.<\/p>\n It\u2019s appropriate first to look briefly at what happens in the House of Undying chapter in Clash of Kings<\/em>, told from Daenerys\u2019 point of view.\u00a0 (It\u2019s the next-to-last \u201cDaenerys\u201d chapter, coming a little over two-thirds of the way in the novel.)\u00a0 As I mentioned, there\u2019s bits of Poe and Lovecraft and somewhat generic fantasy and horror motifs in the nightmare visions in this chapter, along with a plot that alludes to an epic hero\u2019s journey into the world of the dead to learn something that will aid him (it\u2019s usually a him) on his quest.\u00a0 (Odysseus, Aeneas.)\u00a0 As Dany says to some of the Undying she meets in Clash of Kings<\/em>, \u201cspeak to me with the wisdom of those who have conquered death.\u201d\u00a0 She receives the prophecy she requests, but as in most epics the omens are confusing to interpret\u2014though here the meanings are hardly as opaque as, say, Elijah\u2019s prophecy to Ishmael in Melville’s novel\u00a0Moby-Dick<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cthree treasons will you know \u2026 once for blood and once for gold and once for love<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Pyat Pree, head sorcerer of Qarth, at first appears to be on Dany\u2019s side, giving her advice before she enters the House on how to survive its labyrinth and sorcery (\u201cnever go down, and never take any door but the first door to your right\u201d).\u00a0 Not too surprisingly, Pree later proves treacherous.\u00a0 An avatar of Pree appears and tempts her to think she\u2019s gone the wrong way, or even exited the House entirely; when Dany refuses to follow him, \u201chis face crumbled inward, changing to something pale and wormlike.\u201d\u00a0 (This moment was probably one of the points that gave Benioff and Weiss inspiration for their revisions.)\u00a0 At the chapter\u2019s very end, Pree tries to kill Dany with a thrown knife when, to his surprise, she emerges from the House with her sanity intact.\u00a0 But (unlike in the HBO scene) Dany\u2019s climatic confrontation with Pree in Clash of Kings<\/em> is rather anti-climatic; it\u2019s Dany\u2019s protectors<\/em> who save her:\u00a0 \u201cthe knife went flying, and an instant later Rakharo was slamming Pyat to the ground.\u00a0 Ser Jorah Mormont knelt beside Dany in the cool green grass and put his arm around her shoulder.\u201d\u00a0 Benioff and Weiss wisely decided that this was not<\/em> the way to bring Dany\u2019s House of the Undying journey to its conclusion.<\/p>\n Another inspiration for the HBO revisions surely came from the moment in Clash of Kings<\/em> when a wizard king tempts Dany by offering her knowledge, weapons, and luxuries.\u00a0 In Martin\u2019s words, \u201cShe took a step forward.\u00a0 But then Drogon [one of Dany\u2019s baby dragons] leapt from her shoulder.\u00a0 He flew to the top of the ebony-and-weirwood door, perched there, and began to bite at the carved wood.\u201d\u00a0 Drogon, not too subtly, is reminding Dany that she must take the weirwood door, which lies to the right, rather than listen to her tempters.\u00a0 Drogon later uses his fire-powers to save Dany from vampiric, decaying creatures who latch on to her and start to devour her.\u00a0 \u201cShe could hear the shrieks of the Undying as they burned\u201d will remind HBO viewers who read the Clash of Kings<\/em> of Pree\u2019s screams as he burns in the HBO version.<\/p>\n Dany\u2019s hallucinations in the House of the Undying in Clash of Kings<\/em> include tempting visions of childhood that make \u201cher heart ache with longing.\u201d\u00a0 (Martin\u2019s prose is not always clich\u00e9-free, unfortunately.)\u00a0 One vision Dany has is of Ser Willem from Braavos calling her \u201cprincess.\u201d \u00a0But this vision barely makes Dany pause; she\u2019s in no way fooled or tempted by it:\u00a0 she wants to kiss his hand, \u201cand then she thought, He\u2019s dead<\/em>\u2026.\u00a0 She backed away and ran.\u201d\u00a0 Benioff and Weiss would take this moment and revise it to make it much more interesting:\u00a0 it becomes two<\/em> different dream temptations for Dany. \u00a0And unlike in the novel, these temptations aren\u2019t easily rejected by her; they appeal to deep needs within Dany that aren\u2019t fully explored in the first two novels in Song of Ice and Fire<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n Now some arguments for the greater strength of the HBO Dany.\u00a0 These ideas do not depend on the actress playing her, Emilia Clarke, though Clarke\u2019s very good acting certainly does no harm to my case [footnote 1]. \u00a0Rather, I base my claims on how Benioff and Weiss\u2019 writing and the directing have transformed and strengthened the whole House of the Undying episode. \u00a0Here are three points to consider regarding the HBO Game of Thrones<\/em> changes:<\/p>\n 1. \u00a0There was much howling by fans on the Internet because Benioff and Weiss changed Dany\u2019s motivation for entering the House of the Undying:\u00a0 only<\/em> in the HBO version the sorcerers have stolen her dragons and now she must get them back.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t happen in Clash of Kings<\/em>.\u00a0 But this change makes Dany\u2019s motivation to enter the haunted castle much stronger and more understandable.\u00a0 Furthermore, unlike in the novel, Dany doesn\u2019t get a verbal \u201cmap\u201d from Pree telling her how to survive the castle\u2019s physical and psychological maze.<\/p>\n Pree\u2019s motive in the novel for giving Dany this accurate map confuses me.\u00a0 Because he hopes to make an alliance with her and her dragons if she survives?\u00a0 How plausible is it that she would do such a thing?\u00a0 Not very, I think, given that Pree would have little power over her; she\u2019d surely give him her thanks and move on.\u00a0 It\u2019s more reasonable, not to mention more Machiavellian, to think that in the novel Pree gives Dany his \u201cmap\u201d thinking she won\u2019t be able to follow it and so will become trapped by the House of the Undying\u2019s spell, leaving Pree then free to take her dragons.\u00a0 Either of these two possible interpretations are interesting, but they are hardly compelling:\u00a0 if we assume that Pree\u2019s \u201chelping\u201d Dany in the novel is a dangerous illusion, Pree\u2019s treachery is far<\/em> more vividly realized in the HBO version of the plot. \u00a0In Game of Thrones<\/em>, Dany enters the tower with no<\/em> guide and against everyone\u2019s advice because her instincts tell her the Undying want her dragons\u2019 power; she knows she\u2019s in a life and death struggle with Pree and the other undead sorcerers who have slain most of the rulers of Qarth.\u00a0 This makes for much better drama.\u00a0 Pree\u2019s evil is just as devious, but Dany\u2019s response is more daring and dangerous\u2014and much more is at stake.<\/p>\n 2. \u00a0The dream visions Dany has in the House of the Undying weren\u2019t just of random scary stuff, however frighteningly they are described in the book. \u00a0Dany\u2019s visions in the HBO episode are directly tied to Pree testing her and trying to trap her.\u00a0 Once she\u2019s mysteriously drawn inside the House of the Undying, leaving her guardians behind, she has no map, just her bravado and intelligence to guide her.\u00a0 She grabs a torch to explore the darkened chambers\u2014and shouts defiance at the Undead and their \u201cmagic tricks.\u201d\u00a0 But the cinematography also superbly captures Dany\u2019s vulnerability\u2014it\u2019s like she\u2019s entering a crypt.\u00a0 (It\u2019s like that moment in all great horror films, when we want to shout to the heroine, \u201cno no, don\u2019t<\/em> go into that room alone\u2026\u201d.)<\/p>\n Dany\u2019s lost, imprisoned dragons become her allies in the HBO reading of the House of the Undying\u2014they help her rescue them and herself.\u00a0 It\u2019s Dany hearing the dragons\u2019 screams in the distance, for instance, that allows her in her dream vision to resist the temptation to touch the Iron Throne.<\/p>\n Think for a moment how superbly imagined Dany\u2019s vision of King\u2019s Landing and the Iron Throne was in the HBO version.\u00a0 For Dany\u2019s Throne temptation unfolds a vision of King\u2019s Landing after it\u2019s been burned and looted and abandoned to Winter.\u00a0 The seat of power in Westeros has been abandoned, and Dany in her dream longs to approach it and to touch it.\u00a0 Dany reaches out in her dream and almost<\/em> touches a snow-covered arm (?) of the Throne.<\/p>\n But then Dany hears her dragons\u2019 distant cries and pulls her hand away.\u00a0 If she\u2019d touched\u00a0 the Throne what would have happened?\u00a0 Could she have been frozen alive in the future forever?\u00a0 And how should we interpret all this?\u00a0 As a cool allegory for how Dany must to learn she can\u2019t ascend to power too easily\u2014she has to be patient and fight for it?\u00a0 Or just as a vision of the dark, cold future awaiting not just Joffrey but the Iron Throne itself?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After Dany resists the temptation of the Iron Throne, she steps outside of \u201cKing\u2019s Landing\u201d and suddenly\u2014it\u2019s dream space-time, after all\u2014she is far away, going through the gate in the Wall into the frozen North. \u00a0 In this dream-geography for Westeros, Death is an even scarier boundary, giving a whole new meaning to \u201cNight Lands\u201d and what might lie on the \u201cother side\u201d of the Wall. \u00a0Dany\u00a0wanders into the Night Lands\u2014and it\u2019s here<\/em> that she encounters her most dangerous dream of all, a vision of Drogo \u201cliving\u201d and yearning to reunite with her. \u00a0Their brief dialogue was superbly written, with both humor and tenderness (and a choice swear word from Drogo that really did<\/em> make him seem to have come back from the dead).<\/p>\n Once again the dragon cries play a crucial role.\u00a0 When they interrupt Dany\u2019s hypnotized contemplation of husband and child, they prompt her to resist the illusion\u2014the wish-fulfillment dream\u2014that Drogo lives and all her losses can be recovered. \u00a0She\u2019s touching foreheads with Drogo and looking at \u201ctheir\u201d child, until she hears her dragons screaming in the distance calling her away.\u00a0 Another brilliant detail ends the scene:\u00a0 when Dany was first enraptured by the vision, Drogo and the baby seemed fully alive; once she\u2019s skeptical, Drogo\u2019s eyes, we notice, have become unfocused, his body language stiff and all wrong.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if Dany\u2019s doubt and then her refusal has made Drogo suddenly a living corpse, undying yet dead, exposing the fakery of the vision\u2019s life-like hologram.<\/p>\n In the HBO version, then, Pree the sorcerer lays really powerful mind-traps for Daenerys.\u00a0 Pree seems to be probing to find Dany\u2019s weakness by tempting her with two of her most seductive but unspoken desires\u2014her desire for power and revenge and her yearning to retreat into an alternate future where she\u2019s not a childless widow.\u00a0 If Dany succumbs to either of these seductions, Pree will truly control her; she\u2019ll have enchained herself.\u00a0 Dany has to resist those visions in order to continue on her rendezvous with her destined real<\/em> power & leadership, still well in the future. \u00a0In short, the dream visions added by Benioff and Weiss are not just clever or gratuitous additions but reflect a profound understanding of how the entire House of Undying episode should work as a test of Dany\u2019s character.\u00a0 Ultimately these changes are very much in line with the primary \u201carc\u201d of Dany\u2019s character development in the novels, as she moves gradually from weak innocence to strength. \u00a0We could also say the HBO changes here are true to the spirit<\/em> of Martin\u2019s portrayal of Dany, if not to the letter.<\/p>\n 3. \u00a0After leaving Drogo, Dany suddenly finds herself transported by magic back into the Undying tower room\u2014the same one with multiple doors and a central pedestal that she first entered before her visions.\u00a0 It may be that she\u2019s never left the room\u2014that all her \u201cjourneys\u201d to King\u2019s Landing and the Wall and Drogo\u2019s tent have been merely implanted visions.\u00a0 But now the room is no longer empty: Dany\u2019s dragons are there on the pedestal, chained.\u00a0 And Pree emerges from the shadows, a cadaverous grin on his face.\u00a0 His temptation-visions having failed, he is now intent on confronting Dany with brute power\u2014and the strength of cast iron chains.\u00a0 Confident of victory, as the best villains always are, he makes the same mistake that those villains often do\u2014he gives away his secret.\u00a0 In this case, it\u2019s his motive:\u00a0 to keep his magic strong, he needs to imprison both Dany and her dragons.\u00a0 It\u2019s a kind of vampirism, but here Pree\u2019s need is to feed on magic, not blood.\u00a0 This is Dany\u2019s final temptation\u2014the temptation of despair.\u00a0 But Pree\u2019s reliance on mere chains to hold Dany proves a mistake.<\/p>\n I particularly enjoyed how the dragons played a part in Dany\u2019s liberation by gradually<\/em> discovering their power to kill.\u00a0 (Previously, in an absolutely delightful scene, we\u2019ve seen them being taught by Dany to use a tiny jet of flame to cook the meat scraps.\u00a0 They\u2019re sort of like leathery kittens learning to use their claws.) \u00a0As with the suspense involving wildfire in the \u201cBlackwater\u201d episode, the suspense here too is carefully built up before the fire is unleashed.\u00a0 Dany first looks over her shoulder at the little ones.\u00a0 Seeing her, they get a gleam in their eyes, then one of them emits a puff of smoke while Pree gets a somewhat worried look on his smug face.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Dany gives the command for fire, one dragon lets loose with a short, tentative burst\u2014and it starts a small fire on Pree\u2019s sleeve.\u00a0 Suddenly multiple, full-throated jets of fire stream out from either side of Dany as she stands chained and untouched by the flames, eyes closed, looking within herself.\u00a0 Pree does his best imitation of a marshmallow melting, twitching, and collapsing into the fire.\u00a0 And then it\u2019s all over.\u00a0 The dragons don\u2019t break or melt their chains, or Dany\u2019s; once Pree dies the chains turn to dust before our eyes<\/em>, cold cast iron merely proving itself to be part of Pree\u2019s spell.<\/p>\n As \u201cDaenerys\u2019s Dragons\u201d [ https:\/\/twitter.com\/DaenysDragons<\/a> ] tweeted, the Emmy nominations academy should \u201ccreate a Best Dragon(s) in a Drama category\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n In the great screen shot above, now circulating widely on Thrones<\/em> fan sites, it\u2019s almost as if the fires are coming from inside Dany herself, from her womb.\u00a0 Chained, Dany in the HBO version learns how to unleash some of her dragons\u2019 powers\u2014just as she has repeatedly discovered strength before in the face of others, especially men, doubting or betraying or trying to capture her. \u00a0But the dragons are not just about Dany having better weaponry.\u00a0 Dany\u2019s dragons are both \u201creal\u201d yet also allegories for Dany\u2019s own inner strengths of character, ones she must gradually discover. \u00a0In the endings of each of the first two seasons of Game of Thrones<\/em>, Dany walked through fire to make her new powers born. \u00a0And we know there are more to come.<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n So \u2026 what do you think?\u00a0 How would you<\/em> compare the House of the Undying chapter in Clash of Kings<\/em> with how it was done on HBO?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know about you, but I rank the House of the Undying sequence as one of the best moments in the entire \u201cValor Morghulis\u201d episode, and that episode of Thrones<\/em> as one of the best and most moving TV I\u2019ve seen in decades of watching.\u00a0 (Yes, \u201cBlackwater\u2019s explosions and fighting were cool, but the season-ending episode had wildfire plot explosions and revelations of much subtler kind.)\u00a0 Each of the other scenes within \u201cValor Morghulis\u201d is rich enough for an essay too\u2014I haven\u2019t even mentioned White Walkers; or the scene with Tyrion and Maester Pycelle, Podrick, Shae, and Varys; or Arya\u2019s magical last encounter with Jaqen H\u2019ghar; or Jon Snow finding out that he actually does<\/em> \u201cknow nothing\u201d\u2026.<\/p>\n What\u2019s maybe not so delicious is having to wait until spring 2013 for Season 3.<\/p>\n But high quality is rarely mass produced.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]\u00a0 See Vintage-Blogs for 15 June 2010 for reaction to Emilia Clarke being cast as Daenerys<\/span>, including facts about her audition, samples of her acting on the British TV show Doctors<\/em>, and a rave review of her audition for Dany from none other than GRRM himself.\u00a0 http:\/\/vintage-blogs.blogspot.com\/2010\/06\/emilia-clarke-is-new-daenerys.html<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n For an essay of mine on the \u00a0Game of Thrones<\/em>\u00a0title sequence (the opening shots with theme music), \u00a0see this link<\/a>. \u00a0 It’s responding to fan sites and a friend’s blog.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For a different take on Daenerys, as a model for authors, entrepreneurs, and leaders, especially women, see http:\/\/www.mourningdovepress.com\/tag\/daenerys\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Note: this essay discusses books 1 and 2 of George R.R. Martin\u2019s The Song of Ice and Fire and seasons 1 and 2 of HBO\u2019s Game of Thrones.\u00a0 There are no spoilers here regarding later books. What thoughts … Continue reading \n
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