Brienne has been cast for season 2. She’s gonna need a lot of makeup and a helluva workout program to get ugly and big enough, IMHO: http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/07/08/brienne-game-of-thrones/
That could work, actually. Except for the face, she’s about perfect…the woman is 6’3" (seriously…google image her…she’s an Amazon!)! They can probably make her face work with enough makeup, and she can be filled out by wardrobe…it’s not like Brienne has any shirtless scenes (well, except for the Harrenhall bathhouse).
Though the “end” of one of those isn’t 100% clear.
Ha! It’s so fun to not worry about spoilers. Though I haven’t gone into those other threads people are talking about.
I thought both of their ends were pretty darn clear. Tywin buys it on the crapper thanks to Tyrion and his crossbow and The Mountain dies after days of screaming from the Red Viper’s poisoned spear.
Really? You didn’t catch the whole Qyburn/Frankenstein subtext? Gregor’s COMING BACK…as an unstoppable flesh golem.
I might be getting whooshed here but wasn’t his head getting shipped to Dorne during FoC?
Allegedly.
But Qyburn is quite clearly completing construction of Cersei’s ‘unbeatable champion’.
Gregor is totally coming back. I wonder if he’ll get turned to ash by a dragon? Torch him from 50 feet up. It’s the only way to be sure.
-Joe
A head was getting shipped to Dorne. I imagine by the time it arrives, given travel times in Westeros, it should be sufficiently unrecognizable, if it didn’t begin that way. There’s more than enough undercurrent in Qyburn’s conversations with Cersei to assume that Gregor is being kept alive, if not very healthy. The talk of “puppeteers” in relation to the women that Cersei has been giving him makes me thing that maybe the head actually IS Gregor’s, but the body won’t need its original head.
Trust me, there’s a LOT of stuff going on underneath that particular section of the story to indicate dark, necromantic type arts being used. Remember, too, that Qyburn promises her an unstoppable champion when he visits her in her cell at the Great Sept. I don’t know who that can be but Frankengregor.
I don’t know where I read this, but Gregor, being huge as he was…his skull wouldn’t be too normally-sized. And the bones aren’t going to rot.
So, isn’t an ape’s head (or something along those lines) being sent?
-Joe
It might just well be his actual head. One of the things Bran dreams about while in a coma is a man with golden hair and a man with a dogs head together while a giant armored man with no head towers over them.
Nightmare fuel. Like theHeadless Monks, brought to us by the writer who invented The Weeping Angels, The Empty Child and the Vashta Narada.
Ok, that’s just weird.
I don’t know. Having just finished Tuf Voyaging, I’d say Martin could handle it.
There’s a passage in Crows where Qyburn tells Cersei that it took a long time for beetles to eat all the flesh off Gregor’s skull (okay, technically they don’t say it’s Gregor) because it was so large, so the intent is to send only a skull. Whether it’s actually Gregor’s remains to be seen.
Hey, that’s my favorite Martin book! Did you love love love it?
I did. In some parts it reminds me of Jack Vance, especially his dialogue in the Dying Earth stories. And I think I want a whole book about Ma Spider. Seriously. Probably my favorite character (Tuf included).
Not a fan of the Brienne casting… 
I hope she bulks up a lot, but I was really hoping we wouldn’t get “Hollywood Ugly” 
Depends on what they do with her - makeup is a great tool. If they can make Charlize Theron ugly, they can make anyone ugly. Body type is way more important, and getting a tall woman is half the battle. If she bulks up and/or they can costume her in a way that makes her look bulky, she could be a very, very good Brienne.
I hadn’t thought of Vance, but you’re right. And Tolly Mune is indeed a great character. I emailed GRRM some years ago to urge him to write more Tuf stories, and he said he hoped to someday. Might be a looooooong time now…
I thought about making a separate thread for this, but since the discussion here seems to be dying down a bit, I guess it won’t derail anyone.
Is GRRM just messing with us?
I’ve listened to the commentary on Pan’s Labyrinth, and Del Toro makes the comment at the death where the man’s face gets graphically beaten in with a bottle that he did that so we’d take the rest of the movie seriously. No other death in that movie is half so graphic, but it still took me 3 or 4 watchings to figure that out, because after the shock of the bottle death I covered my eyes whenever it looked like someone else was about to get it.
Did GRRM kill off Eddard Stark to shake us up the same way?
One of the major things I was told about this series when I picked it up - and one of the things I pass on to new people picking it up - is that “anyone can die! Main characters, good guys, protagonists - this isn’t a typical fantasy book!” And of course, the death of Eddard Stark is one of the main reasons feel the need to qualify the books that way.
But really… considering the world they live in, the actual deaths of POV/protagonist characters are pretty much as few and far between as most fantasy series. Lots of supporting characters die, but POV characters mostly get a “tease” death - he makes you THINK he’s killing the character at the end of a chapter, but that character’s only very injured/knocked out/kidnapped or whatnot when their next chapter rolls around.
The Red Wedding chapters are a really good example: Apparently in quick succession, Robb, Catelyn and then Arya are all killed, Robb and Catelyn at the wedding itself, Arya when the Hound hits her in the back of the head with an axe. I was truly, honestly upset for their deaths the first time I read that - knowing that Eddard had died, ANYONE could die.
But only Robb died. Catelyn was brought back to life by the red priest, and Arya was only knocked out with the flat of the axe.
GRRM does this all the time - makes us THINK he’s killing a character for real, but then they turn up again later, in mortal peril of some sort, but alive.
He killed Eddard just to make us THINK this was a book where “anyone can die” seriously, but once he’s convinced us, he doesn’t really need to do it again, does he?
I find while I reading DWD that I’m taking any mortal peril a character is in with much less upset and much more of a grain of salt than I have in previous books. I guess the “lesson” of Eddard is starting to wear off. I don’t really believe he’ll kill off “anyone” anymore.