A Song of Ice & Fire by George R.R. Martin: Book Discussion Thread

[Microfracture]

Melisandre is Miss Cleo status on the show

 

[beanz]

the more i think about it, i think the show will combine lady stoneheart and jon. jon is probably gonna come back to life and start killing betrayers left and right and then once he's done with them he's coming to winterfell with a wildling army to kill freys and boltons. since jamie and brienne and that story line is scratched, vengeance has to come from somewhere. who better than the rightful king in the north and king of westeros jon targaryen .

then he can come back to the wall and die honorably and dany can be queen with rickon as king in the north or sansa queen in the north.

 

[dennis roadman]

the more i think about it, i think the show will combine lady stoneheart and jon. jon is probably gonna come back to life and start killing betrayers left and right and then once he's done with them he's coming to winterfell with a wildling army to kill freys and boltons. since jamie and brienne and that story line is scratched, vengeance has to come from somewhere. who better than the rightful king in the north and king of westeros jon targaryen .

then he can come back to the wall and die honorably and dany can be queen with rickon as king in the north or sansa queen in the north.

Doesn't factor in jon's parents but is probably pretty close as a very general theory

 

[daze23]

idk what people were expecting. the show pretty much left us with the same cliffhangers as the book

lol @ the Benjen troll

 

[beanz]

Doesn't factor in jon's parents but is probably pretty close as a very general theory

they could just mention it through bran and even tho all show watchers and book readers will want to see jon as king, he wont be. he might even find out himself and be like so? i dont want no throne. i want vengeance.

 

[dennis roadman]

they could just mention it through bran and even tho all show watchers and book readers will want to see jon as king, he wont be. he might even find out himself and be like so? i dont want no throne. i want vengeance.

Nah jon's true origins being revealed has to be a huge moment. We've been waiting for it since ned left him on the kingsroad. The result might be the same, yeah, but the reveal gotta be some episode 9 shyt

 

[beanz]

Nah jon's true origins being revealed has to be a huge moment. We've been waiting for it since ned left him on the kingsroad. The result might be the same, yeah, but the reveal gotta be some episode 9 shyt

yea i agree

 

[beanz]

idk man i hate to be one of those book fags that whines about the show, but im reading people's points against the show on reddit and its all very hard to disagree with. this is one person's post...

I think this is part of what makes Season 5 and particularly Mother's Mercy one of the most poorly written pieces of TV in the history of Game of Thrones.

Regardless of the events depicted in the episode, it is the cheap way they were layed out what bugged me the most. My screenwriting professors would tear this thing into pieces:

• Deus Ex Varys: The character appears out of nowhere for no reason just to be where the writers need him to be next season. Yes, the character is great. Yes, his chemistry with Tyrion is really tempting and makes the writer want to give them more screen time together. However, when you completely forget about the character for half a season and he just magically reappears when and where you want him, and only once other characters have moved on to a different location leaving you with the need to fill dialogue pages in Meereen, you're not only depriving him of motivation and arc. You're cheaply using him as a gratuitous plot device.
  
  
• The off-screen death: Brienne, who appeared for 8 seconds in the whole season, appears Deus Ex Machina to kill Stannis in the last minute. No explanation. No build-up. No stakes. How did the writers foreshadow this? By openly having Brienne telling the audience she was going to do so during those 8 seconds. Masterful. Her "climatic" revenge takes the form of one of the most uninspired and cardboard dialogues Gwendolyn Christie has been forced to recite so far. And then they deprive the audience of the emotional impact: no reaction shots, no resolution. There's no emotion, just action, pure shock value underlined by the cheapest trick in the catalogue: the off-screen death cliffhanger.
  
  
• The jump: Theon killing Reek felt very anticlimatic, as if some shots of inner turmoil were cut from the final episode. The Emperor/Myranda was just pushed with no emotional transition from Darth Vader back to Anakin and there was no real pay-off to Theon's arc in the season. Again, having a character falling from the walls to her death from on screen and then having the protagonists jumping from the same walls --with no true emphasis in the difference of terrain or snow depth-- is felt as illogical by the audience and only serves one objective: shock-value, cheap cliffhanger.
  
  
• Mercy: Apparently Ser Meryn Trant was not previously depicted as villainous as the writers wanted him to be. Killing Syrio, hitting Sansa when ordered by Joffrey, being revealed as a pedophile in the previous episode... no, he also had to be a sadistic torturer of little girls. They did this with Joffrey too, it seems that the writers think that openly "evil" characters must be also literal psychopaths in order to make the audience root against them. And then the revenge killing scene dragged for so long I wonder if they are subtle enough to be pointing towards a future psychopathic Arya or they just did it for shock value, once again.
  
  
• By having Sam being the one who has the idea of going to the Citadel and become a Maester, you're undermining both him and Jon as characters. On the one hand, you're not preparing the emotional ground for "For the watch": Jon forcing one of his last true friends and allies to abandon him for the good of the watch is a perfect paradigm of the tragic sequence of events that end with him being completely alienated from the remaining crows. From the point of view of the reader/audience, Jon is acting as a good Lord Commander is supposed to be, thinking about the big picture and taking decisions that make sense... but we also see that this leaves him alone and misunderstood, and a sense of dread is always looming: we wish he wouldn't send Samwell away. But no, in the show it is Sam who wants to abandon his friend... so none of this is felt by the viewer.
  
  
• For the watch: The way this sequence was handled baffles me. They have a 20 second scene of Jon just reading scrolls. No info on what he is reading, no emotional attachment to the scene. Then the Benjen trick is pulled on the audience and all the main characters at the Wall, including Ser Alliser Thorne, collaborate to get rid of their Lord Commander. No subtlety, no nuance. Previous episodes served to paint Ser Alliser as a complex character: yes, he's a dikk, but he's also a true Night's Watch, a knight. He has strong views and is unsympathetic to a main character, but he's also brave and loyal. We've seen him push his antipathy aside when concerning matters of great importance for the watch. Having him following on his dislike towards Jon Snow in the end cheapens him as a character. The writers chose to focus all the emotional impact of the scene on the final shock. But in doing so, they missed on the opportunity of having it really be meaningful. There should've been a "final straw". Something that compelled the conspirators to proceed and that gave the audience a looming feeling. Previous episodes laid the groundwork for this, some kind of substitute for the Pink Letter: Davos was asking the Lord Commander to support Stannis in taking Winterfell and Jon accepting it would've been the much needed last straw. The worst thing is that, since Benjen wasn't really mentioned in 4 seasons, using him as a bait was not directed towards the character but to the audience. Really cheap.
  

Oh, there's more: Myrcella declaring her love to his father just to die in his arms --with no reason to have that knowledge-- serves only shock; the greatest military mind on Westeros attacking Winterfell against all military odds in a stubborn impulse; how the absence of the reveal of a bigger motivation behind Doran's actions renders the Dorne plot fruitless; "bad poossay"... but this is the extent that my poor English as a Second Language allows me to go. The whole episode felt rushed and focused only towards cheap shock tricks. The scripwriting is far off from the first three seasons, from greater HBO shows and very far from the original material, in my humble opinion.

 

[daze23]

I think they could have got a better body double for Cersei. I remember a big part of her 'walk of shame' was that her body was kind of and saggy

 

[The Watcher]

idk man i hate to be one of those book fags that whines about the show, but im reading people's points against the show on reddit and its all very hard to disagree with. this is one person's post...

I agree with the Sam deciding to go to the Citadel himself gripe - that was a stupid change that made it look like Sam was eloping with Gilly instead of Jon sending his friend off to become a maester because it was good for the watch.

I also hate how they made Meryn Trant (and all the other "bad guys") into a super villian, I think that pulling some little girls off their dish-washing duty to use as whores is bad enough without going to that extreme place where he's also beating them, but I guess that's what they felt they needed to do to justify Arya stabbing him in his eyeballs.

The rest of those complaints seem like an extreme case of book reader butthurt.

Varys was always on his way to Dany in the show. Why would Tyrion getting snatched up make Varys stop traveling towards his initial destination? His reasoning may not be 100% clear yet, but he didn't "appear out of nowhere for no reason" just to give Tyrion a friend, he finally arrived at the place he'd been traveling to since last season.

People have been predicting Brianne killing/attempting to kill Stannis all season because of all the "build up" and "explanation". This person does not understand what Dues ex machina actually means if they think that there was no foreshadowing for Brianne and Stannis meeting and her possibly killing him in the show.

I liked Reek and Sansa's jump. It makes sense in the show world. It would've been nice to see the result, but since the theme of the entire episode seemed to be cliffhangers, it's not surprising that they jumped into a dark oblivion. To me, it read the exact same way as in the book when it was Reek and Jayne

As far as "for the watch" goes, I'm okay with how it turned out. It's been leading up to this since Jon returned from his adventures with the wildlings. The straw(s) that finally broke the Night's Watch were Jon letting a bunch of wildlings through the wall, which pissed off a bunch of people that DIDN'T say "lift the door", and then a day later Jon is sending his best homeboy and his wildling girlfriend off to a safe and temperate Oldtown while the rest of them are stuck there to die. The pink letter was awesome in the book, but in the show there was no reason for it to happen. The Red Lady showed back up at the wall with sad face and gave the impression that Stannis is done, so what would be the point of Ramsay (or a fake Ramsay letter written by Stannis) instigating Jon? No one knows Sansa and Reek jumped. There's no Mance or spearwives killing everyone in the shadows of Winterfell. It would make no sense in the show to go that route.

fukk 'em for the Benjen troll though.

 

[TheGreatShowtime]

With Jon in limbo, I wonder if we'll see some sort of dialog between Jon & Bran. Bran might catch Jon up with everything going on and guide him through it all

 

[Dat Migo]

You clowns will never be satisfied

 

[yeahisaidit]

Davos cared more about shireen than stannis

Once he finds out how she died

I know, that's why I figured he would kill her once he realized that Shireen was dead.

 

[The_Sheff]

idk man i hate to be one of those book fags that whines about the show, but im reading people's points against the show on reddit and its all very hard to disagree with. this is one person's post...

His screenwriting professors that most likely never had anything reach the screen. Yeah, i had a professor in my coding class that would complain endlessly about how sloppy retail programs were coded, yet if you looked up his credentials it was with software nobody ever heard of and if you could find it, it was reviewed to be shyt.

I like that they actually let Sam make a decision for once, everything doesn't have to be about Jon Snow and his decisions. In the book all Sam does is whine and cry, its very annoying and makes it hard to like him as a character. The show portrays him as an actual functioning human being for once which is great.

 

[TheGreatShowtime]

I know, that's why I figured he would kill her once he realized that Shireen was dead.

Assuming no one on Stannis' side survived the siege, how would he know what happened? I mean, he pretty much knew Melisandre was going to try and sacrifice her but I think he thinks so highly of Stannis that he would think that Stannis wouldn't allow it. With everyone dying, Davos could easily assume that Shireen died in the siege & that could make him seek vengeance on Ramsey. Just saying. Unless Melisandre snitches on herself to him