Just found this thread...
Had a few musings over the past few weeks, and kept thinking the the right people to discuss them with would be other GRRM fans on mumsnet. So here goes;
Do you think the makers think that all the fans are men? I know there is a lot of sex in the books, but there is a lot of everything in the books, and the amount of sex scenes & female nudity in the tv show seems very high... Its bugging me a bit when I watch it; I skim read sex scenes in the book, they just don't do anything for me as mostly so exploititive of the women involved, and its harder to avoid them on the screen. Maybe its just me being something of a prude.
The casting of Littlefinger doesn't seem very good to me. I think that actor is quite wooden, and he is such an important character all the way through the published books, I was hoping he'd be a bit more exceptional & interesting.
I disagree that "no one is safe from GRRM's sword of badness" (though I like that expression!). Yes, although children die in the books, I think I'm right that so far only ancillary child characters that we haven't got much invested in emotionally, die. Everyone involved in the RW is an adult by then.
Bad stuff has happened to Bran, Arya and Sansa, but I think he is somewhat sentimental towards them, and predict that they will all survive to the end of the series (or Sansa may die but in some very self-sacrifical way to atone for her mistakes in GoT).
If you want genuine unsentimentality, and the best writing around, read Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles. It was a someone on a fan site about that series who first recommended GRRM to me, back when only the first 2 books were out. I believe GRRM is a big fan of hers, and I can see her influence on his writing.
Having got my moans out of the way, can't wait for the next GRRM to come out; we've got 2 copies on order from local bookstore, to avoid killing each othermarital disharmony as otherwise DH and I will argue about who gets to read it first!