If Book!Barristan dies, I’m going to weep like a baby. I was too angry at his death to cry last night.
I don’t need “shockers” to keep me invested in this show. Just talking about Lyanna and Rhaegar a couple times was so much more interesting to me than all the boobs and blood. You can tease readers without killing Whitebeard. 
You will never, ever get work as an HBO programmer.
Just teasing, but: yeah.
Lancel keeps showing up and getting increasing fanatically; it won’t be long before he decided to confess his since to the High Sparrow.
While I agree in the sentiment, I disagree on the execution.
There’s a shit load gone from those, mostly “A feast for editors” as I call it.
They’ve cut the ironborn, and there was a lot to do with that. Though I’d like it their raiding on Tyrell lands was in, just to show that everyone has their problems.
Sam’s long and boring journey and “So you are in the nightwatch, hey do you know Jon Snow?” bit which didn’t happen with Arya, but should have, ffs. And Bravos. Dareon. Ending with the Citadel. If the citadel features later, it might mean there’s a new faction in play. But so far no.
The rest of Briennes long wander. Perhaps the hound is alive? Well, guess she’ll have to kill him again.
Riverlands. Edmund Tully and Blackfish. Well, this bit at least was interesting.
Only Cersei going crazy, Arya’s training and Dorne plot were worth saving anyway. They’ve sensibly gone.
From ADWD, what I’d reckon to be a far better book, they’ve compressed the good stories.
“The north remembers” is a loss, though we’ll perhaps see the overall arc transferred.
Mereen, FFS Dany, GET ON WITH IT. Anything which hurries this lot up is good, though arguably we were halfway through ADWD last season for Mereen.
Tyrion. The griffs, well, an interesting bit, but can be snipped. Spoiler of omission. Allows Tyrion to wallow a bit less than a couple of hundred f**king pages. If I read “Where do whores go” again… Not sure if we’re going to get all the fannying about with slavery and sellswords too.
Greyscale seems to be taking over from the pale mare. Fair enough.
More iron islands dropped. To be fair, they were at least interesting in this book.
So there’s a HELL of a lot dropped. I don’t object to that. It’s keeping the good bits. A few minutes more and Cersei, who is clearly mad, is at least tricked into rearming potentially the biggest faction in her midst. Sansa marrying Ramsey. Nah. She’s had it bad, but its as bad, maybe worse than walking into Kings Landing and giving Cersei a wave…
You know, I can’t even remember most of the stuff you mention. I remember Tyrion walking, boating, being abducted while asking “where do whores go.” I remember these new princes we never heard about trudging on for hundreds of pages before being killed and I remember something about Jon being killed (but probably isn’t, he’s just mostly dead). The books were hundreds, if not thousands of pages too long and I doubt we’ll see any more.
The Iron Islands were quite prominent in Feast for Crows mostly, and seemingly, the way that Dany comes back to Westeros. Though of course, she’ll have to try to navigate the fact that Victarion wants to marry her first.
I still hate, hate, hate that the show has decided not to cast the character of Arianne. Quentyn, ok, fine - but his plot was there to show how far ahead Doran Martell had planed to overthrow the Baratheon usurpers. Those deletions rob the character of his most interesting qualities.
And I think that’s a problem with a lot of the alterations the show has made. Some of those plot that seemingly went no where exist to further explain the characters we already know. Did the Tyrion boat ride go on for too long? Yes… but I would argue that if after Tyrion’s capture we didn’t get all the Penny stuff, it would have been ok (like Tyrion gets captured, then you don’t hear about him until the end of the book where he pops up again being sold off by the slavers). Anyways, I really enjoyed the Old Griff / Young Griff stuff, as it was an interesting surprise and (for me anyways) caused one to look at the whole thing in a different way.
Also I do tend to feel that the show doesn’t really know what to do with a bunch of characters. Brienne, who basically disappears after she runs into Lady Stoneheart, is now chasing Sansa to Winterfell… to also kill Stannis… apparently. Speaking of Lady Stoneheart, they’ve completely dropped the Brotherhood without Banners. You’d think they’d still be causing some problems even without Stoneheart, right? Dany… well, Dany’s stuff was the more boring in the books as well, so little they could do with that. Though, if possible, she seems every more stupid in ruling in the show than she does in the books. The whole thing with Cersei being minimized in power, by Tommen trying to move her back to Casterly Rock, is silly - Tommen doesn’t even bother to sit on the Small Council, FFS!
Also the exclusion of Ser Pounce this season (I know he was around in past seasons) is inexcusable :mad:
So the death of which character would be most shocking in the show, for book readers?
In the sense that we’d now know their arc was done, and it is done in the book (not Barristan, I don’t think he was important enough, his role can be taken by others).
Stannis? This one wouldn’t suprise me. It’s looking like Brienne is a pretty damn good candidate for that, she’s got a proven track record with the Hound. And you wonder if Stannis has the information about who she is why she hates him.
Tyrion? Well, I know a lot would be shocked, but while well liked and witty and I’d miss him, I can see him not being in the final book…
Mines, would be:
Littlefinger. He’s planned so much, and has been such the prize manipulator that it would be such a loss to not find out his plans and what he was behind…
Cersei or Jaime? Both would be quite shocking, I think.
I’d think that Cersei more than Jamie. I’d not be surprised at all if Jamie died this season. He’s a voice of reason, getting to be a good guy, not really the driving force.
Cersei dying would mean that the poison at the heart of all this (the button which Littlefinger pressed to start the war) would be gone. Jamie would not be a bad ruler as a replacement.
The most shocking death would be Arya. She’s gone through so much and come so far, both in character development and in terms of literal distance. There are all sorts of hints about where her journey has been leading. If she were to die and all that came to an abrupt end, I don’t think the book readers would stop wearing black bands on their arms until at least a year had passed.
GRRM hasnt been quite as much into killing POV characters as you might think. Recently, in the last couple of books, few have died- or stayed dead. He’s getting attached to his characters.
Or setting up his readers.
I’ve got speculation as to the ending of Season 5, given what we know, and what has been set up… To be fair its pretty much from a reddit thread…
If JS is alive, they’ll not be able to hide such an obvious thing while filming season 6. So they’ll have to resolve it this season.
So, episode 9, the title is still unknown so far, but they’re not afraid to spoiler the big strokes (S03E09 = The Rains of Castamere). So I predict if its not called “For the Watch”, then the big event with JS will happen that episode. Leaving him dead.
JS’s parentage might have been revealed by then to make the death more important. Perhaps, perhaps not. Might be forgotten.
Then the final scene of Season 5 is JS’s body getting burned.
And he gets up and walks alive out of the fire.
I’m not sure how it would hold together. White walker? Or resistance to fire might just indicate (with the usual obvious hints, such as monologuing by Danys that episode about fire resistance) that he’s from the Targaryan lineage… I’d bet on the latter…
However, as GRRM has pointed out, that now he’s got his characters where he wants them, he can really start killing them off (to which people were like, you weren’t really killing them off before?!!).
Recall the original plan for Feast for Crows was to have everyone “5 years later” - then he realized he couldn’t make that work, so he explained the 5 years. That’s why few have died.
Remind me, who else was on the Mad King’s Kingsguard other than Jaime and Barristan Selmy? Are any of them still around?
Nope - all died during the final conflict for the throne. Only Selmy and Jaime survived the war.
Arthur Dayne ( the biggest badass of them all ), Gerold Hightower and Oswell Whent died in some kind of epic skirmish with Eddard Stark and six of his buddies ( five of whom died themselves ). Lewyn Martell and Jonothon Darry died at the decisive battle of the Trident, where Barristan Selmy was severely wounded but was spared.
OK, thanks!
We’ll always have, fingers crossed, eventually the books.
So i’m fine with them changing/simplifying plotlines. If your changing a story between different media formats it’s probably almost inevitable that you’re going to have to change what may just not work in the new format.
There’s barely enough screen time as there is. Can you imagine if we had to throw the Iron Islands, Jon Conninton and young Griff, Quentyn Martells quest, etc etc. into the mix as well.
I like to think of the TV series as a fun ‘Alt-history’ version of the story.
I didn’t think Kevan would reappear on the show, and I’m happy he did since I like the character.
I’m betting that after taking over, he will be murdered by Littlefinger (Varys being absent, and Littlefinger having apparently some urgent business in King’s landing).
A crazy idea crossed my mind.
Is it conceivable that Varys and Littlefinger are actually working together for a common purpose?