|
You were the one suggesting Aegon's only reason for existence was a panicked GRRM needing to figure out a way to bring Daenerys to Westeros, and that this was proven by the show cutting him out. The prophecy and the fact that he was unwilling to firmly state Aegon is dead are evidence that he had this in mind long before he ran into the "Mereenese Knot". And he said the problem was figuring out when each character would get there in relation to every other character and in what order these events would unfold, not how Tyrion would get there. If he wanted Tyrion to get there without the riverboat excursion, he could've simply had Jorah kidnap Tyrion a lot earlier on and made the characters Tyrion travels with previous to that equivalent to the people living at that inn in the Riverlands, rather than introducing Aegon and JonCon and alluding to a potential Blackfyre backstory and a connection to Varys and Illyrio. At the very least, I would think a second Dance of Dragons will kill a lot of the good will Daenerys might've had from the people of Westeros, and I think it's likely significant that the bits of Targaryen history GRRM has focused on the most so far are the eras of civil war among the royals.
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 11:03 |
|
|
I didn't say Aegon was a reason for bringing Dany to Westeros, I said he's nothing more than an obvious waystation of poo poo writing for her character to absorb his because the author's the literary equivalent of George Lucas at this point. And no, the show cutting him (if it even has) doesn't prove my point, I'm being facetious.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:22
|
|
|
Midnight City posted:Could be but I'm choosing to believe it was Completely Unnecessary Side Character #814, 1-810 naturally being Darkstar followed by Quentyn and Penny and whoever else I've managed to drink away the memory of by now. Is Robb a side character?
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:25
|
|
|
Mischitary posted:I feel like the television series' goal is to tell an entertaining story within the world of Westeros, whereas the books' focus seems to be on discovering the world of Westeros by using an entertaining story. This is why stuff like Jaime treating with the Brackens and the Blackwoods at the riverlands makes sense in the books but not in the television show. This is really astute. One problem I have with most major fantasy series is that they tend to focus more on world building than story telling. That isn't a bad thing if you're a reader who likes getting lost in other worlds, but there still has to be a driving narrative to give a sense of direction. One of the things I admired most about ASoIaF is that the narrative comes out of the characters, and (in the early books) rarely felt plot-driven. As a pretty obvious example: when Tyrion finally snapped and killed Tywin, it felt both earned and entirely organic. It's a hard trick for a writer to pull off in a contemporary story, let alone in fantasy. The problem is--and this isn't exactly a novel idea, I know--the last two books had too much world and not enough narrative. For series that set the expectation of being (at least partially) travelogues, like The Wheel of Time, that's fine. But ASoIaF started as one thing and became another. The show's writers, like most of the series' readers, understand that, and they're doing what they can to prevent the show from turning out the same way. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:29
|
|
|
enraged_camel posted:I'm hoping that writers who set out to adapt books to movies or television will realize that drastic changes to source material almost always hurt the end product. I'm hoping anyone who reads this post realizes that you're a whiny baby who doesn't want "my books  " to be changed at all.strangeneighbor posted:Watchers on the Wall looks pretty good. Thanks for that. Yeah, Watchers is literally all of the writing staff from winteriscoming switched to a new site after it was bought out. GonSmithe fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jan 31, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:30
|
|
|
Midnight City posted:I didn't say Aegon was a reason for bringing Dany to Westeros, I said he's nothing more than an obvious waystation of poo poo writing for her character to absorb his because the author's the literary equivalent of George Lucas at this point. I don't know why you're writing off everything from the last two books before they've had any kind of payoff(and yes, I know I'll get a "There will never be any payoffs because GRRM will never finish") to be honest. I don't see anything offensive about Aegon or the Greyjoys or Dorne gaining more significance, when GRRM kills off so many characters the natural next step is to bring in new ones from the parts of the world that have only been alluded to before.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:32
|
|
|
Yeah, well, who cares about Aegon. I only like that the show makes Varys somewhat less retarded. None of the 'let's make convoluted multiyear mastermind plots (that will fall the first moment we voice them out loud)'. That, plus killing Kevan and Pycelle and making a grand speech as though I was supposed to care about these tertiary characters as though they were some MAJOR PLAYERS, made me literally laugh out loud when I got to the end of DWD. That book is definitely overplotted (fArya, burning Mance, baby switches, Quentyn, yes, Aegon), but this was the shark-jumping moment.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:33
|
|
|
meristem posted:Yeah, well, who cares about Aegon. Oh ok thanks for letting me know.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:35
|
|
|
3Romeo posted:This is really astute. Arya's entire story since Ned lost his head has been her being swept along the winds of fate, doubly so with Sansa. It's definitely been a prevailing theme since the first book (Bran's story is literally "I've lost any force I have to change my life").
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:36
|
|
|
3Romeo posted:This is really astute. I don't really agree that they became something different, the first three books are a pretty similar formula. Most of the Stark kids, and Jaime, and Catelyn, and Daenerys, and Sam, and I'm sure other characters that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head, all have a very similar "Going from place to place and getting into adventures while learning something, then going to the next place" storyline much like the reviled Brienne and Tyrion storylines in AFFC/ADWD. But in some cases, those stories actually even spanned multiple books. While it ended in a big battle, most of the King's Landing characters in ACoK are in a pretty stagnant place for most of the pagecount, not unlike Mereen in ADWD. As someone who came into the series late, when all the current books had already been released, I actually found ACoK noticeably dragged the most for me. And every book from the get go has a ton of extraneous detail from describing every single food at every meal to describing some part of the history of Westeros, etc.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 16:45
|
|
|
meristem posted:Yeah, well, who cares about Aegon. That shared reading app where you can put indentations in parts of books to see what other people were thinking at the same time was only ever worth it for three parts that I used it in, Darkstar's 'of the night' which was just a sea of "LOL", 'the north remembers' a wall of 'whoa' and Varys' speech made for no reason that was all 'uhhhhh'
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 17:05
|
|
|
To be perfectly honest, as long as they keep Reek's winterfell storyline, keep Cersei's walk of shame, keep "The North Remembers" somehow and last but not least keep Drogon loving poo poo up in the pit and I couldn't give a single poo poo about Aegon and co. If you cut ADWD/AFFC down to the good bits it's going to be one hell of a season and will probably be the first time the show overtakes the books in terms of quality.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 18:08
|
|
|
computer parts posted:Arya's entire story since Ned lost his head has been her being swept along the winds of fate, doubly so with Sansa. It's definitely been a prevailing theme since the first book (Bran's story is literally "I've lost any force I have to change my life"). True. But Arya and Sansa both serve as POV characters for characters that actually have agency (like Roose). To give Martin his due, it's a pretty elegant approach to writing: using one character to pass information about other characters to the reader (and leaving just enough clues so that big events, like the Red Wedding, are obvious in retrospect). Reek/Theon serves this purpose in Dance, which may be why I like his chapters so much. Beeez posted:I don't really agree that they became something different, the first three books are a pretty similar formula. Most of the Stark kids, and Jaime, and Catelyn, and Daenerys, and Sam, and I'm sure other characters that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head, all have a very similar "Going from place to place and getting into adventures while learning something, then going to the next place" storyline much like the reviled Brienne and Tyrion storylines in AFFC/ADWD. But in some cases, those stories actually even spanned multiple books. While it ended in a big battle, most of the King's Landing characters in ACoK are in a pretty stagnant place for most of the pagecount, not unlike Mereen in ADWD. As someone who came into the series late, when all the current books had already been released, I actually found ACoK noticeably dragged the most for me. And every book from the get go has a ton of extraneous detail from describing every single food at every meal to describing some part of the history of Westeros, etc. I'll agree with this, too. But I think the biggest difference is that the formula worked in the first three books: going from place to place meant picking up ancillary characters that ended up having huge effects on the story. Nimble Dick and Crackclaw point don't serve any purpose at all, except to show a corner of Westeros that probably won't figure in to anything. The show entirely cutting it out is pretty good evidence to support that. In case anyone missed it, this is me talking out of my rear end. But this far along, I'm more invested in the show than the books now, because the writers know what's worth keeping and what's worth changing or getting rid of. They're the editors Martin has needed for the past ten years.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 18:28
|
|
|
It would have been awesome if the show producers had a sense of humor and released all kinds of reports of Channing Tatum, Robert Patterson, Bradley Cooper, etc all vying to get auditions for a hot new character for Season 5... Darkstar.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 18:53
|
|
|
GonSmithe posted:I'm hoping anyone who reads this post realizes that you're a whiny baby who doesn't want "my books I'm OK with some content being taken out. The books had a lot of places where things dragged on seemingly with no purpose. The show is a great opportunity to trim those. I also understand that not every minor character or quibble can be in the show. Taking those out is fine. On the other hand, I'm not OK with major characters/factions being either completely cut (e.g. Aegon, Greyjoys) or being replaced by other major characters (e.g. Sansa possibly becoming Lady Stoneheart). I know people in this thread love performing all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify such big re-writes, but I want the show to be an "adaptation," not a "remake."
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 19:30
|
|
|
enraged_camel posted:(e.g. Sansa possibly becoming Lady Stoneheart) What? What? That's the worst thing I've ever heard.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 19:39
|
|
|
Steve2911 posted:What? Someone speculated a few pages back. It may not happen (which is why I put "possibly" in there).
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 19:43
|
|
|
Steve2911 posted:What? Not in terms of being undead, but in terms of being the person who rallies the BwB, starts hanging Freys, demands Brienne bring her Jaime... I'm not in love with it, but it makes more sense than I thought at first.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 20:45
|
|
|
Cutting stuff in the show hasn't generally been bad, it's the stuff that gets added which is almost all terrible. Exceptions include the Tywin/Arya scenes. But gently caress the Craster's Keep Sidquest, Mountain III Tekken intro, and Yarasha's "On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. 'Tis a silly place."
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:03
|
|
|
Mortabis posted:Cutting stuff in the show hasn't generally been bad, it's the stuff that gets added which is almost all terrible. Exceptions include the Tywin/Arya scenes. But gently caress the Craster's Keep Sidquest, Mountain III Tekken intro, and Yarasha's "On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. 'Tis a silly place." On the other hand, everything they've added with Brienne, Pod, Arya and Sandor (including their fight) was wonderful. Even the megabrothel in the first two seasons was full of good stuff, even if it was mostly stupid ("Play with her arse"). It's the dialogue and character interactions that they always seem to nail, but they can't handle new plotlines or filler/divergences too well. EDIT: Speaking of which, the fact that they feel the need to add filler at all to such a dense series is incredibly baffling. ASoS has more than enough cool scenes and conflict without a battle in Craster's keep. They could have cut that from the budget/schedule and put the resources into making the battle at the Wall a bit better. stev fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jan 31, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:08
|
|
|
Mortabis posted:Cutting stuff in the show hasn't generally been bad, it's the stuff that gets added which is almost all terrible. Exceptions include the Tywin/Arya scenes. But gently caress the Craster's Keep Sidquest, Mountain III Tekken intro, and Yarasha's "On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. 'Tis a silly place." Counterpoint is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIUyVeDsHfs I think this might've been the first time Rains was performed on screen too.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:11
|
|
|
computer parts posted:Counterpoint is: In that vein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcdPc-fLzno I seriously wish we got a longer scene of this. It's wonderful.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:14
|
|
|
Potato Kid has greatly improved the GoT universe and I can't wait to see what he does in this season.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:31
|
|
|
Steve2911 posted:On the other hand, everything they've added with Brienne, Pod, Arya and Sandor (including their fight) was wonderful Most of that I think you're right about but the fight and interaction between Brienne/Sandor had plenty of people who thought it was downright stupid and badly filmed quick cut bullshit on top of it that can probably be blamed on its director not understanding what the hell he's doing.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:33
|
|
|
Steve2911 posted:On the other hand, everything they've added with Brienne, Pod, Arya and Sandor (including their fight) was wonderful. Even the megabrothel in the first two seasons was full of good stuff, even if it was mostly stupid ("Play with her arse"). Right. Ask D&D to pick 2 characters out of a hat and write them a conversation in a room or a field and it will be gold. Ask them to come up for something for them to do to keep the actors onscreen while they wait for plotlines to sync up and they usually come up cliched nonsensical garbage. The Craster's sidequest was pretty bad, but I'm not sure what they should have done differently after deciding to spread Storm over two seasons. If they followed the book as closely as they did in Season 1 (which they just aren't doing anymore) Ygritte would have died in like, episode 1, the big Wildling attack would have been spread over 3 or 4 episodes intercut with Tyrion's trial, and I don't even know what they would have done for the holy poo poo episode 9 everyone expects. Pacing and budget make that nonviable, so instead they crammed the Wildling attack into episode 9 and made episodes 1-8 basically filler for Jon.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:43
|
|
|
I can agree that the quick cuts were a bit annoying but the scene had some weight from all sides and was a much better addition that a crazy Nights Watch guy literally drinking from a skull
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:45
|
|
|
Steve2911 posted:EDIT: Speaking of which, the fact that they feel the need to add filler at all to such a dense series is incredibly baffling. ASoS has more than enough cool scenes and conflict without a battle in Craster's keep. They could have cut that from the budget/schedule and put the resources into making the battle at the Wall a bit better. The biggest failing of Season 4 for me is that they really, really wanted the Night's Watch/Wildling battle to be a penultimate episode event. So they had to stretch the hell out of Jon's storyline to get that. I have had one friend stop watching because Jon's storyline and made the show too boring for him. Lycus fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jan 31, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:46
|
|
|
I really hope Hardhome won't be craster's keep 2.0 but either way I am happy we will get a battle scene during day for once atleast.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:53
|
|
|
Lycus posted:The biggest failing of Season 4 for me is that they really, really wanted the Night's Watch/Wildling battle to be a penultimate episode event. So they had to stretch the hell out of Jon's storyline to get that. I have had one friend stop watching because Jon's storyline made the show too boring for him. I completely agree with that. The best solution would just be to not have much Jon in the series until episode 9 though, surely? Just take us back every two episodes or so to show that they don't have many men and aren't in shape for a battle, and inter-cut it with the Ygritte/Thenn stuff they already had. Slowly but surely build tension over the series and have it explode at the end. Instead we got a poo poo buildup to an underwhelming climax with a few good bits.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:54
|
|
|
What were the most ridiculous theories in the past seasons? I remember 'Tyrion doesn't kill Shae', 'Talisa is a spy'... what else was there? Something about Locke? Anyhow, I consider 'Sansa turns into Lady Stoneheart (whether literal or figurative) on par with those.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:54
|
|
|
KKKLIP ART posted:I can agree that the quick cuts were a bit annoying but the scene had some weight from all sides and was a much better addition that a crazy Nights Watch guy literally drinking from a skull Gin Alley is really the lowest the bar can possibly be set though My bullshit meter goes Gin Alley > Peephole into peephole into peephole > Brienne taking 5 seconds to decide to start attacking a guy Arya was clearly being protected by > I don't know what you guys are talking about I didn't direct a rape scene > beetle smashing meristem posted:What were the most ridiculous theories in the past seasons? I remember 'Tyrion doesn't kill Shae', 'Talisa is a spy'... what else was there? Something about Locke? Anyhow, I consider 'Sansa turns into Lady Stoneheart (whether literal or figurative) on par with those. The best theory was that my little pony guy who'd keep arguing they probably wouldn't do Robb Wind
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 21:57
|
|
|
Sometimes I wonder if Craster's Keep could've been better if they had gone ahead and let Jon and Bran meet up. I don't know what they could've had Bran say to make Jon okay with letting him go, they would've had to come up with something good there. But since everybody says that the show excels in new dialogue scenes between characters, I wonder how much they could've improved things there.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 22:01
|
|
|
It's so frustrating that series 4 was both the best and worst series by far. The Purple Wedding, Oberyn's fight and the adventures of Arry and Sandy were so, so good, but the poo poo scattered between these things feels like a terrible show made by idiots.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 22:02
|
|
|
Hit and miss describes it pretty well. I would agree that the show writers are generally good at making up new dialogue for characters but then we got the smash the beetles speech.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 22:05
|
|
|
FMASH DA BEEDLES is possibly the best line of the show and Cousin Soft Head is the best off screen character
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 22:16
|
|
|
Steve2911 posted:In that vein: I seriously wish that Westeros had more than two songs.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 22:18
|
|
|
Alhazred posted:I seriously wish that Westeros had more than two songs. :bigtran: Hey handsome, what song am I singing?  The Bear and the Maiden Fair!:bigtran: Nope! The Rains a Castamere!:bigtran: Nope! *nervously looking around*    
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 22:22
|
|
|
Thr battle in Hardhome, assuming it is another Night's Watch excursion a la Craster's Keep, will probably end with Jon getting stabbed by his Night's Watch brothers for being stupid enough to fight the Others.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 22:23
|
|
|
In It For The Tank posted:Thr battle in Hardhome, assuming it is another Night's Watch excursion a la Craster's Keep, will probably end with Jon getting stabbed by his Night's Watch brothers for being stupid enough to fight the Others. That reminds me that he hasn't even been elected LC yet. If he's going to be stabbed at the end of the series there's so much poo poo to get through. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 22:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 11:03 |
|
|
In It For The Tank posted:Thr battle in Hardhome, assuming it is another Night's Watch excursion a la Craster's Keep, will probably end with Jon getting stabbed by his Night's Watch brothers for being stupid enough to fight the Others. My official guess is: Jon will lead a mostly Wildling army to Hardhome. The show's version of the battle will be a success. Jon will kill one or a few White Walkers with obsidian. The Wildlings will now look up to Jon as a legit leader and agree to the alliance with Stannis. The Wildling love will upset the Night's Watch old guard, leading to the stabbing. Lycus fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Jan 31, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2015 22:30
|
|