Game of Thrones [Potential Book Spoilers]

It fits...

Secret origins of Hodor coming (Hodor!- And I'm serious). Also, details at the link about Mc Shane's likely role Sounds like either a Meribald/Elder Brother mix or Howland Reed- I think the former is most likely.

Show spoilers for their episode 9 but possibly major spoilers for TWOW:

You know what this means?

SNOWBOWL

Battle of the Bastards

GET HYPED

Yeaahh boooyyy

But I now realize that Stannis got cut out early because they're giving his role to Jon Snow.

Which leads me to believe that Jon's not going to be as prominent in TWOW as I thought.

Considering all the role fusions maybe I should start calling Show Dany by the name of Daegon Targaryen and Show Jon will now be Jannis Barasnow.

edited 15th Sep '15 12:06:59 AM by MadSkillz

I have already started refering to Jeynsa or the Artist formerly known as Sansa.

Its hard to measure "prominence" in TWOW because entirely different mediums. Jon in the books will be spending time in the mind of Ghost, and a literary work can portray that consciousness in another body and form, but TV shows, or rather uncreative TV shows, like to directly show everything. So I don't know if Jon taking Stannis' role means he's less prominent in the books or whatnot.

At this point, the show is a whole another thing, it's not really the books anymore.

Randyl Tarly casting as well as Sam's mother and sister.

Interesting. I hadn't thought of the actor (James Faulkner), but he seems like a great fit. Different circumstances and somewhat sympathetic, but his character on Downton Abbey was a massive jerkass.

Also a good illustration of how you (general) can deceive yourself about how a character looks. I think a lot of people (myself included) think of Randyll as this burly and hairy "neanderthal", but he's actually described as bald and lean.

Also cool at the casting of Samantha Spiro as Sam's mother- I recognized her from this series on PBS talking about performing Shakespeare- I think she was Katherine in a Globe production of Taming of the Shrew.

Perfect casting for Randyll. Just looking at his photo, I feel like he's looking at me as though I've personally disappointed him.

Personally, I don't think Randyll Tarly was an especially hard role to cast. He's a readymade type, domineering military dad. That type is there in the show, you have Tywin and Roose already.

I am surprised no one's mentioned Richard E. Grant in Season 6. He's apparently playing Izembaro, King of the Mummers, or someone close to that guy. It's kind of neat that smaller roles are played by name actors. Brynden Rivers is Max von Sydow and Ian McShane is apparently Septon Meribald/Elder Brother.

I think I understand the book reader's anger

The only way to truly understand our well, it's not anger, but contempt is to actually read the books. And don't read the books just to get angry, read them because they are good and enriching.

It's only limited to Seasons 4 and 5, first three seasons I'd say were okay though in retrospect it had a lot of Franchise Original Sin. Anyway, I am kind of not so bothered so much anymore.

No, I don't necessarily "get" anything else

I just get the rage

if ATLA were adapted this way I'd have a screaming fit

I know Atla didn't have rape and incest and misogyny in it, but I also know that GRRM included these things to challenge them and point them out as problematic. GOT just kind of... had them.

It's been a long time since I last had my dose of nitpicking BS by a fan of the book. The funniest part is - aside from a few points, his ATLA version actually sounds quite awesome. And of course, a lot of the comparisons don't make any sense and lack any kind of consistency between one another, but I really didn't expect less.

If at least they kept comparing the same characters between them, it could have been remotely interesting. But he just looked for some minor changes that are totally understandable (like changing Jeyne Westerling into Talisa) and blew it out of proportions as if it was an unforgivable game changer. It's the kind of guy that would have complained because one actress is too pretty or one actor is too tall if he didn't have anything else to complain about. The complain about Cersei not being sexualized enough actually made me wonder if it wasn't a parody of Fan Dumb instead of a straight example

But at least he admits in the end that he is a snobby fan, which may be the understatement of the century.

edited 28th Sep '15 3:44:44 AM by Julep

I might be an avid book reader, but I never had a problem with divergence in the show.

My problem begins with how they diverged poorly following season 3. Season 4 was punctuated by even more cut content then before, but paradoxically a huge amount of is spent on scenes that just frankly seemed like a massive waste of time. I'm not the sort of person who gets mad because they changed something from the books (Except for Stannis, who they've been getting horribly wrong since his debut) but at this point I don't even understand how an exclusive fan of the show wouldn't be turned off.

Time is spent in weird places, storylines kitter and die off with a whimper, but hey, we have action and fighting so it's cool, right? That's what we watched Game of Thrones for, right?

Guys?

In all seriousness, more power to you if you enjoy the show still, but not even getting into how tasteless they've handled recent material, it's become too much of a mess for me.

Oh I do think last season had really poorly-handled choices, and GOT is nowhere near the current shows I'm enjoying the most - although I find some performances and the worldbuilding as a whole to be worth a watch.

But just thinking that anything that changed from the books is automatically wrong is plain stupid. There were three scenes that I really enjoyed in last season's ending: one was extremely faithful to the book (Cersei's walk of shame), one mixed new elements with canon (the arena battle), and one was completely created (the battle beyond the wall).

There also were really bad scenes created solely for the show (Sansa's first night) or mixing elements (Jon's stabbing), and I found the (mostly) faithful adaptation of Arya's time in Braavos to be incredibly annoying (actually, adding Trant in the lot actually made it a bit more entertaining to watch).

So in the end - the show highs and lows have nothing to do with being faithful to the books, it has to do with whether the writing is good or bad. Automatically dismissing any deviation from the source material is Fan Dumb at its finest - if you keep watching the show only remarking what changed, then you should not watch it, you should just read the books once more, since it is the universe you seem to enjoy.

They did give us Dany riding a dragon. I've been waiting for that since the day I st down to watch this show.

Perhaps the recent dip in ratings will encourage them to return to a more faithful adaptation.

Well, last season focused a lot on two horrible story arcs - Dorne and Winterfell. Both suffered from the authors trying to include book elements in things they obviously had planned, which made them awful to look at.

Meanwhile, for the battle beyond the wall, they just decided not to bother with what was supposed to happen and it was awesome.

So honestly, I think they would be better off completely forgetting about the books, and doing their thing. Maybe it'll rock, maybe it'll suck, but this time if it sucks it will be because their idea sucked, not because they had an idea but felt forced to stick some book elements in it. There was room to do something good in Dorne...but not with the Sand Snakes and Ellaria, those were the wrong characters to do so, no matter how cool they are in the books (and how much they had to change Ellaria...). Despite not being exactly my favorite character, I think that an Arianne Martell would have brought much more to a political intrigue such as the one caused by Jaime's presence than the Snakes did.

Which is why, incidentally, I am not that keen about them adapting the Greyjoys. Aside from the fact that I personnally loathe their chapters in the books, they are completely disconnected from, well, everything else. You can cut them out once Winterfell is captured by Ramsay and the story would go on practically unchanged for everyone with Theon alone (and unlike Dany, no one gives a f—k about them since they proved once more than they sucked at doing anything beyond pillaging coasts). So D&D trying to add them is sending all kinds of "it's gonna suck" signals in my direction. In any event, I will acknowledge if it's good - because it means it will actually be better than the books.

edited 29th Sep '15 5:17:24 PM by Julep

see, if they had kept the intrigue plot with Arianne that would have been just fine. But they adapted her out? and replaced her with Myrcella? Dude.

I'm not complaining about Trystane though.

the longer he's on screen the happier I am.

The intrigue plot with Arianne that goes absolutely nowhere? No thanks. At least TV!Dorne had Dr. Bashir.

I kinda liked TV! Dorne

Dr. Bashir had like two lines.

It mattered for believe it or not, thematic purposes. And it only lasted two chapters. One to introduce it and one to end it.

It also led to Arys Oakheart losing a spot thereby opening up a position for Ser Robert Strong, introduced Arianne who seems en route to becoming a major character, set up something with Darkstar as well as set up Quentyn who also seems kind of a dead end but also makes it so the Dornish would break from Dany and ally with Aegon and helping set up the Second Dance With Dragons.

So now I'm wondering how Ser Robert Strong got a spot if no KG recently died. I mean Trant did but presumably they don't have that info yet or maybe they do.

But anyways I understand why the cut Arianne out. They did an Alexander and cut the Gordian Knot in two.

The IT can still fight the Dorne but it'll be about the Lannisters wanting revenge for Myrcella's death rather than to support Aegon's claim and tearing down the Lannisters.

edited 29th Sep '15 9:26:03 PM by MadSkillz

Meryn Trant lost a spot and actually brought some excitement in Arya's story which was a lot of creepy nothing until then.

I didn't like the "Too Old" crap. It lasted too long.

I mean I did like that she killed Trant off though and I guiltily liked some Jaqen's lines as she was going blind and the mind trippiness of her last scene.

Arya's story was a lot of nothing before then. They really needed to add in the backstory about the Faceless Men and the meeting with Sam.

And for some reason even though they rushed everyone else's storyline, they really slowed hers down to a crawl. She still has AFFC material to get through next season.

edited 29th Sep '15 9:35:39 PM by MadSkillz

I think the problem with the adaptations is when they are Comically Missing the Point of the books they adapt. The books are not Hollywood, the fight scenes, even with a little stylization, are meant to be realistic to medieval tactics for the most part. The narrative has Loads And Loads Of Characters because history is like that, it's an experimental work of fantasy and that's what made it unique for its time, and what distinguished Game of Thrones.

Then slowly they start squaring the circle and make the TV series more Hollywood with their fairly blinkered notions of TV preventing them from doing anything unique.

You may be among those who would enjoy the absolutely faithful adaptation of the books, but HBO would never get its money back if they did that, because all the casual viewers or non readers would be lost. So they have a wider audience and a simplified story instead. That is called pragmatism. That is also why more people watch Game of Thrones instead of History broadcasts on Capetians and Plantagenets.

And let's not even get into how useful it can be to have two pieces of media that are the exact copy of each other.

edited 30th Sep '15 9:49:33 PM by Julep