[TV/Books] Game of Thrones ***SPOILER Discussion***

[Deleted]

Barristan had been a poor advisor though. First, he is a Ned Stark, advising Dany to rule by great principles, honour and virtues, while the chaotic situation in Meereen demands a more flexible mindset. Which Tyrion has. Also, he advised Dany to rule Meereen as if it was Westeros. That did not work well either. As Duke Leto Atreides would say:

"On Caladan we ruled by sea and air power - here on Arrakis we will need Desert Power."

Tyrion is far better in politics than Barristan Selmy, who is just a great fighter. Even if he had survived, I'm pretty sure Tyrion would have quickly taken his place as main advisor and Queen's Hand. Too bad he's dead though. He would have made a wonderful spokesman when Dany crossed the Narrow Sea. Having Barristan Selmy the Bold at her side would have helped her gain support in Westeros. Now, with the Imp, murderer of his nephew the King and his father the King's Hand...

Also, let's face it, Tyrion is a far more important character than Selmy. His mere presence in Meereen would overshadow Barristan.

On another subject, the other thing Dany needed after a good political advisor was good intelligence. She had no Master of Whisperers. A lot of problems would have been averted if only Dany has had a good spy net at her disposal. I suppose Varys will manage to build one now that he is in Meereen.

I agree that Tyrion is a better politician (he's not a queen after all), but I definitely think that Barristan was killed so that Tyrion could get even more spotlight. Which isn't okay. Tyrion already has loads of screen time.

"Not much screen time" is pretty much a given in GoT. Jonathan Pryce/High Sparrow did not have much screen time either, though it was effective. We also don't know what they want to do with Euron Greyjoy. So Ian McShane could still play that character and have a huge impact on the show.

Well sure, but I assume they mean relatively. I am speculating that if Ramsay dies, Euron will be the new Ramsay (who was the new Joffrey). And because D+D love the psychopathic characters he'll get lots of screen time and be the main villain for S6. When the article says not much screen time I'm assuming it will be something along the lines of Doran or Mance (both tragically wasted actors and characters btw). A lot of gravitas in the scenes he's in and some key role, but ultimately a small appearance. A one (or three) scene wonder.

[Deleted]

I wonder if Yara will kill Euron to serve a narrative of female empowerment.

Greyworm and Missandei were given more screen time than they should have been. The last time we see Greyworm he is leading the Unsullied in the defense of Meereen. I suppose the show creators wanted to be more diverse.

I suppose we will slowly see Jon unite the North against the White Walkers which are a common enemy. I wonder if he will marry Dany. GoT is a popularity contest now, so the creators might make it happen regardless of whether it happens in the books or not.

I'm done with the show. I consider it fan fiction. I can't wait for the next book.

[Deleted]

I'm not a fan of the show either any more...though for different reasons. The show is the opposite of female empowerment (though it thinks that it is).

[RobertoCarlos]

I wonder if Yara will kill Euron to serve a narrative of female empowerment.

Greyworm and Missandei were given more screen time than they should have been. The last time we see Greyworm he is leading the Unsullied in the defense of Meereen. I suppose the show creators wanted to be more diverse.

I suppose we will slowly see Jon unite the North against the White Walkers which are a common enemy. I wonder if he will marry Dany. GoT is a popularity contest now, so the creators might make it happen regardless of whether it happens in the books or not.

I'm done with the show. I consider it fan fiction. I can't wait for the next book.

Good please stop watching it and posting here.

[Deleted]

Good please stop watching it and posting here.

You enjoy your gynocentric show.

I always have The Sopranos. >

[Tommy T]

Some people can't separate fiction from reality.

It really baffles me. Why do we have these discussions on female empowerment and so fourth. It's a fucking T.V show based in a fantasy world.

[Eazy]

I'm not a fan of the show either any more...though for different reasons. The show is the opposite of female empowerment (though it thinks that it is).

Did you expect women to be the best knights/warrior in the "medieval times"?

What the hell guys?

[RobertoCarlos]

Some people can't separate fiction from reality.

It really baffles me. Why do we have these discussions on female empowerment and so fourth. It's a fucking T.V show based in a fantasy world.

Its like those feminists at comic con. I legit try to think where they are coming from. Like to actually pay money for tickets. Travel. Get in costume, wait in line then ask a question about how feminism isnt being represented in a fictional fantasy setting written by a MAN. Like....is your job/life that easy you have nothing more to be worried about. It literally is mind boggling to me.

[Deleted]

Did you expect women to be the best knights/warrior in the "medieval times"?

Did I say that? In fact this is part of my complaint - D+D focus too much on the action girl archetype. There's nothing wrong with that archetype but I want a bit more variety in my female characters (in all characters actually). D+D take the diverse female characters of the books and badassify them, making most of them either masculine action girls or seductresses (and ignore them if that can't be done). Margaery is a sexually manipulative schemer, Jeyne Westerling is replaced with a badass battle nurse, Shae is a knife wielding Essosi possibly noblewoman. Brienne is a brute instead of never having killed when we meet her in the books.

And that isn't even getting into how they treat sexual abuse. I have no problem with the depiction of sexual abuse (ASOIAF wouldn't be my favourite series if I did). But boy does the show not know how to handle that well. They remove pretty much all the exploration of misogyny and patriarchy from the books but keep the sexual violence which the books use to illustrate it, with the end result being said sexual violence simply acting as set dressing in the show. Set dressing and shock value.

I mean look what they did with Winterfell. Winterfell in ADWD is often said to be some of Martin's best writing to date. Yet D+D looked at that story and the only major event they included was the rape scene. Even though the victim in the books doesn't exist on the show. They didn't think the Northern Lords, or Frey Pies, or Theon's arc or the murder mysteries or any of that was worth adapting.

Blegh. Anyway that was a bit of a rant. But seriously this show...it's really sexist. Which is a damn shame because the books have some of the best female characters in modern fantasy.

[RobertoCarlos]

You left a few females off your list, Cersei? Dany? Missandei? Catelyn? Gilly? So because they can take care of themselves and have power either it being owning dragons or having a famous name, or a mother just trying to care for her child theyre bad ass arch types? Nah I'm not buying it sorry. I think game of thrones has interesting female characters and covers pretty much all types. Its silly to dismiss the fact they fight and just say its sexist when fighting in westeros is as common as eating.

[Caliph]

Did I say that? In fact this is part of my complaint - D+D focus too much on the action girl archetype. There's nothing wrong with that archetype but I want a bit more variety in my female characters (in all characters actually). D+D take the diverse female characters of the books and badassify them, making most of them either masculine action girls or seductresses (and ignore them if that can't be done). Margaery is a sexually manipulative schemer, Jeyne Westerling is replaced with a badass battle nurse, Shae is a knife wielding Essosi possibly noblewoman. Brienne is a brute instead of never having killed when we meet her in the books.

And that isn't even getting into how they treat sexual abuse. I have no problem with the depiction of sexual abuse (ASOIAF wouldn't be my favourite series if I did). But boy does the show not know how to handle that well. They remove pretty much all the exploration of misogyny and patriarchy from the books but keep the sexual violence which the books use to illustrate it, with the end result being said sexual violence simply acting as set dressing in the show. Set dressing and shock value.

I mean look what they did with Winterfell. Winterfell in ADWD is often said to be some of Martin's best writing to date. Yet D+D looked at that story and the only major event they included was the rape scene. Even though the victim in the books doesn't exist on the show. They didn't think the Northern Lords, or Frey Pies, or Theon's arc or the murder mysteries or any of that was worth adapting.

Blegh. Anyway that was a bit of a rant. But seriously this show...it's really sexist. Which is a damn shame because the books have some of the best female characters in modern fantasy.

Some people (you) will whine about anything. Female empowerment, lol

[Deleted]

You left a few females off your list, Cersei? Dany? Missandei? Catelyn? Gilly? So because they can take care of themselves and have power either it being owning dragons or having a famous name, or a mother just trying to care for her child theyre bad ass arch types? Nah I'm not buying it sorry. I think game of thrones has interesting female characters and covers pretty much all types. Its silly to dismiss the fact they fight and just say its sexist when fighting in westero's is as common as eating.

I think that what diversity there is can mostly be attributed to the books.

I know people say that the books don't matter but I mean...every decision on the show is made in reference to what happens to the books. So they totally matter. So while there is diversity in the female characters, there is a trend towards making more of the characters into either action girls and/or seductresses/schemers than they are in the books. If this was D+D's original IP would there be as much diversity? I don't think so. If you look at Arya being so much more favouritised over Sansa, characters like Shae and Talisa (even Doreah, dany's handmaiden) being stronger and sexier, Brienne being a ruthless killer in the show rather than never having killed...it's a pretty clear pattern to me. They really want all the women to be "strong" but in doing so that kind of defeats the point. Not all women are strong and there are more kinds of strength that women can use than violence or sex appeal.

You mention Cat - you didn't notice how ignored she is on the show compared to in the books? In Season 3 she has less lines than Shae. Season 3! That should have been Cat's season, building up to the Red Wedding! Cat is very much an example of a strong female character who doesn't fit into the typical archetypes that we associate with that phrase. She's no action girl, she's no seductress, she's politically savy but certainly no schemer. But she's strong as steel. And yet...the show shunts her to the side.

And not including Arianne? You cut me deep show, you cut me real deep. I mean some people might scoff at the notion that Martin is writing a feminist work here, but Arianne's story is pretty much explicitly "woman fights patriarchy." So is Asha's for matter that. Both arcs cut from the show.

[RobertoCarlos]

Been hearing this a few times lately with Catelyn, how Shae had more lines in season 3. And all I'll say to that is. If I could adapt a tv show from books that were written to be unmake-able on TV and I got HALF of the cultural hit the red wedding episode was, that not only smashed facebook feeds but broke into mainstream media and made the show one of the biggest hits in TV history. Then Yeah I'm all up for ideas on how you could have improved Catelyns dialog or effect on the show or what lines you would have taken from Shae to make Tyrians trial for jofferys death more awesome. Because where I'm sitting thats some of the best stuff the show has done. For TV!

[eschatological]

You left a few females off your list, Cersei? Dany? Missandei? Catelyn? Gilly? So because they can take care of themselves and have power either it being owning dragons or having a famous name, or a mother just trying to care for her child theyre bad ass arch types? Nah I'm not buying it sorry. I think game of thrones has interesting female characters and covers pretty much all types. Its silly to dismiss the fact they fight and just say its sexist when fighting in westeros is as common as eating.

Your examples are not helping your case. In the books, Danny is a bumbling teen making naive mistakes whose lusty affair with Daario threatens every political move she's made. All those moves having come from Barristan and other Mereenese advisors. In the show she's become a badass dragon lady, whereas the dragons in the books serve to illustrate how little control she has and how quickly she loses it (and lives up to Targ madness).

Missandei is like a 9 year old girl who mainly serves to firm Dany's views on slavery, in the show she's been thrown into some bizarre relationship with a eunuch. A EUNUCH!

Cat - utterly gutted in the show, and then bizarrely not brought back as the Hangwoman, Lady Stoneheart. Exploring her experience as a mother is a vital part of understanding her motivations, only to be dismissed as hysterical - a conclusion also reached on the show but without proper setup. Then, the Red Wedding becomes a shocking gorefest without Cat's emotional descent into madness for her utter failure as a mother to protect her children, whom she thinks are all dead.

Gilly? She's another strong mother in the books, adapted to Sam's crush. Really bizarre progression of their relationship, basing it on a trope-y saving of the damsel situation, when Gilly was more of Sam's pillar then vice versa.

Even Cersei suffers I think. She goes through similar struggles as a mother and her political house of cards is built on her paranoia about the safety of her children and a prophecy made when she was a girl. Whereas in the show she's been made a political schemer solely on some throwaway penis-envy theme where she thinks she would be the best Lannister if only she was a male. ADwD serves to make her a more sympathetic/pathetic character, while she just continues to grow as a villain everyone hates on the show as a badass-but-dumb woman.

[Ryme]

Ramsey's line to theon/reek.. "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention", just screams in my mind.

Genuinely, I think Thrones has a chance, at least in the book, to end in a total defeat for all the heroes and victory for the Whitewalkers. And I would be OK with this.

[Deleted]

Genuinely, I think Thrones has a chance, at least in the book, to end in a total defeat for all the heroes and victory for the Whitewalkers. And I would be OK with this.

Martin has said that the series will have a bittersweet ending. So that's...unlikely.

I've never thought that the message of the books is "anyone can die, honour gets you killed, the world is awful." I think it's about the perseverance of the human spirit even in the face of great adversity. Just look at the northern lords in ADWD. The Starks are all but gone so far as they know, but the name still means something.

The show gets this completely wrong. It just revels in nihilism and beetle smashing.

[Ryme]

Ah, I don't like bitter-sweet endings, they almost always feel cliché.

For me, the books have had the continuing undertones of trying to define what is good and what is evil, showing that to be impossible and almost by extension that just because you're the "good guy" doesn't make you any more likely to succeed.

I suspect the Others will be done far better than the Whitewalkers of the show, to show this complexity. Geroge on interview has said he thinks sides that pure evil are unnatural and stupendously rare, citing only Nazi's as one he could readily think of from all of history. I expect that we'll see more of the Other's heirarchy in the books to come, their culture and motives and hopefully something from them that blurs the line of good and evil.

[Sooba]

Ramsey's line to theon/reek.. "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention", just screams in my mind.

Actually his statement is a direct quote of Tyrion to Oberyn, in the show.

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Arianne is my second favourite character in the entire series (after Tyrion.). And Tyrion is not secure in his throne either, it's a close thing. So Arianne being cut hurt my soul. But then them writing Arianne completely wrong and just reducing her to sex appeal would also hurt my soul...so maybe it's for the best.

You either strawmanned my point / misunderstood it; or I'm misunderstanding you. (Ambiguous phrasing.) I didn't say that she would be "reduced" to just sex appeal. My point was that she is a more compelling character, is more important to the plot and has more sex appeal. If instead you mean that you simply think they would screw up her storyline that badly, I'm not sure. They've done a fantastic job of relatively close adaptation, and terribly when they had to move off-book.

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succinct does not bother me , but thanks for sharing that. I had known there were probably still a few tumbling around in the wind but no clue who might matter, and as I've only finished the first book I noted to take it with a huge grain of salt since this is all speculation from me (spoilers, reviews, wiki, show, and this forum). I would think Bloodraven mattered more because of what he's passing on and who he's passing it on to, but this is my crackpot theory that the Starks have always kept a somewhat high level of Children of the Forest in their bloodline. I've pondered the fact that there are multiple pantheons, all of which seem to have actual powers to some extent and interfere in the mortal realm, probably a ton of discoveries to be made there with time but that can wait for another day.

On the matter of the Starks, I think their evidence, if there is any is just the in your face deposits of their family words, their positions in life, values, what they're going to do, what they must do, and their very nature to be straightforward, honest, and honorable. It would seem a lazy thing to have a character outright say "There must always be a Stark in winterfell", and have that actually be meaningful unless you are letting that character be a veritable mouthpiece for you and almost breach the fourth wall, but it could also be brilliant in a story full of subtle misdirection.

Edit: Pardon me if this reads like a powdered monkey wallowing in beer, I'm tired. The Starks have held the North forever and a half, one of the last regions to have the Children in it? It would make sense to me that some eventual intermingling occurred. I think the answer to the Starks is in the relation to old pantheon and new pantheon and how their peoples interacted. Need Breakfast, peace.

That is one of the thoughtlines, yes. Unfortunately there just isn't enough evidence that I can see, yet. And I've been hunting for it. I'm not sure I agree about the "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell" statement. I suppose that's why I still wonder about it. :P It wasn't said by anyone with real prophetic capacity as I recall, and could easily be explained away as an apt observation about the state of politics in the North. Unless I can come up with other textual pieces to lend it far more weight.

Keep reading! The books are fantastic and it's so much easier to talk about the series with that data.

No worries. I had to sift a little bit to understand your meanings, but your "muddled" is better than some folks' "clear". :P

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Agreed. Barristan was killed so D+D could fanboy over Tyrion some more (I love Tyrion don't get me wrong but D+D have clear favourites and it causes a bias in their adaptation). This is made pretty much explicit when Tyrion meets Dany - his entire selling point for himself is that Dany has no Westerosi advisor, which of course she already would if Barristan was still alive.

Or y'know, they had to cut a bit and Tyrion is going to be having a massive reveal. :P Seriously, of all the parts to complain about...

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I mean look what they did with Winterfell. Winterfell in ADWD is often said to be some of Martin's best writing to date. Yet D+D looked at that story and the only major event they included was the rape scene. Even though the victim in the books doesn't exist on the show. They didn't think the Northern Lords, or Frey Pies, or Theon's arc or the murder mysteries or any of that was worth adapting.

Blegh. Anyway that was a bit of a rant. But seriously this show...it's really sexist. Which is a damn shame because the books have some of the best female characters in modern fantasy.

Like Garian you are mis-attributing (possible) errors made to odd motives or ideas. (Although nowhere near his level of tinfoilery and incohesion!) The show writers didn't disproportionately fuck up female storylines. It was equal opportunity awkwardness. As such, I'm not sure calling the show sexist is really fair. They wandered off script because they felt they had to, and they didn't do a great job of it, plain-and-simple.

[Deleted]

You either strawmanned my point / misunderstood it; or I'm misunderstanding you. (Ambiguous phrasing.) I didn't say that she would be "reduced" to just sex appeal. My point was that she is a more compelling character, is more important to the plot and has more sex appeal. If instead you mean that you simply think they would screw up her storyline that badly, I'm not sure. They've done a fantastic job of relatively close adaptation, and terribly when they had to move off-book.

That wasn't really aimed at you, I was just talking generally about them cutting Arianne.

I don't think they would have adapted her well. Imo they aren't very good at understanding/adapting the characters very well. Obviously characterisation is very subjective, but some interpretations just aren't valid and many characters are literally the antithesis of who they are in the books. And they have such a clear bias. They don't just have their interpretation of the characters, they change things so that their interpretation is true. It's not enough that they think Tyrion is a good guy for example, they have to change events so that he is more of a good guy.

So in regards to Arianne, a lot of people dismiss her as "slutty party girl who messes up" when there's so much more to her than that what with her relationship with Doran and with Quentyn. And I really feel like D+D would have reduced her to that. She would have been hot and appeared in a lot of sex scenes but they wouldn't have captured her character well at all. Especially as they probably still would have cut Quentyn.

[Sooba]

Martin has said that the series will have a bittersweet ending. So that's...unlikely.

I've never thought that the message of the books is "anyone can die, honour gets you killed, the world is awful." I think it's about the perseverance of the human spirit even in the face of great adversity. Just look at the northern lords in ADWD. The Starks are all but gone so far as they know, but the name still means something.

The show gets this completely wrong. It just revels in nihilism and beetle smashing.

Agreed, strongly agreed, and almost agreed.

I get irritated when someone tries to tell me that I'm being "fanboyish" about any one character due to my exposition of prophetic text and then always say "NO WAY BRUH, ANYONE CAN DIE BRUH. TOTALLY BRUTAL BRUH" It's like, seriously? Did you even read these books? Yes anyone can die, even senselessly. But GRRM is providing a way more coherent narrative than that. In fact if you listen to the parts of his interviews where he discusses the nature of writing it's eminently clear that he sets this stuff up purposefully, and that he hated when it had no buildup in previous series.

I "almost" agree with the final portion because I think D&D adapted really well at the start and were well focused, then got carried away with themselves, and are now realizing that they have to fix some gaping holes. The real issue I have are with the folks who gleefully glommed onto that carried-away portion as some evidence of a wonderfully nihilistic ending. By the sound of it, that's the same irritation that you're expressing.