Can anyone think of a scenario in which we get Frey or Bolton pie?
I think being down on the additions is way overblown. One of the best scenes of the series is Cersei and Robert talking in season 1. Plus books 4 and 5 were not good books and would make god fucking awful television. Massive massive changes are necessary.
I think you’re comically overstating this case.
(1) It’s not just menial work, it’s menial work INVOLVING CORPSES. To the extent that the many-faced-God is a real and powerful entity (and something has to provide the magic which lets the faceless men do their face thing, even with a big storehouse of dead faces) it’s entirely plausible that some familiarity with and comfort around death is necessary in order to access death magic
(2) How much total screentime has there been of Arya washing corpses? Maybe 3 minutes spread over 3 episodes? Possibly 5 minutes?
I also really enjoyed the conversation/game she had with Jaqen and his little whip, and how that led into her being able to lie so comfortingly to the sick girl.
So feminist-bent nerd culture website has stated they will no longer promote Game of Thrones after this episode.
Warning the article is full of casual spoilers for the books- so I’m throwing the link in a spoiler box to hopefully protect people from accidentally clicks.
It seems like a bit of knee-jerk. It seems from my skim that their take is “We don’t mind an evil rapist character but we’re tired of characters getting raped for plot reasons”
I totally may be off-base but that was my impression.
I liked A Feast for Crows just fine, Dance was a mess though. I’m fine with trimming things down to make things work for TV, but did we really need to see Ramsey’s torturing? How did the story benefit from turning Jeyne Westerling into a healer from Volantis? How does Sansa goes to Winterfell even make sense?
Cersei and Robert’s conversation is a good scene (and Stannis and Shireen was an even better one) but the vast majority of changes have fallen flat in my opinion.
Jeyne Westerling isn’t even a character! It’s just some generic cardboard cutout. She’s completely a plot device, who cares if she’s named Jeyne or Talisa?
We needed to see some torture, absolutely. Not seeing it works in the book because we get Theon’s inner dialogue. We can see how fucked he is. In the show, if he just shows up stammering and shifty it would be really weird. The audience would get it eventually with Ramsay flaying other people, but his brutality is definitely needed.
Interesting you liked Feast. That’s easily the least liked book in general. I wonder if you’d like Brienne’s story line accurately portrayed? I really think you could take 90% of that book, throw it right in the trash, and lose nothing in the big picture. Keep Arya and Cersei and bin the rest. Then bin Quentyn and 70% of Dany from Dance and you’ve got one mediocre book between them.
I think Sansa’s story makes sense, even with these MASSIVE changes from the book. First, because what gets beaten home time and time again in these books is that it doesn’t matter who you are, bad bad shit is going to happen to you.
And secondly, Sansa’s arc is of a person who starts out with dreams of being a pretty pretty princess, and who comes within a hair’s breadth of getting there, before she learns just how cruel real life is. And even as she slowly starts learning how to deal with it, as she’s barely treading water, she just as quickly learns there’s another shit storm of worse stuff around the corner.
So she’s survived King’s Landing and the Vale and Littlefinger. Each time getting a little stronger, and a little more experienced at how to deal with these things. But now she’s thrown into arguably the worst thing yet. Because shit just piles up and it never ends. So she’s going to have to learn how to deal with it. And she will
I am worried about Sansa’s redemptive arc. She was just coming into her own, thinking about the big picture, and acting for herself, both in the book and in the show. Jeyne Poole had none of that, and since those storylines are blended… what? I’m having a hard time imagining both her and Theon getting their redemptive moments out of this.
The Jaime storyline isn’t action-packed but that’s kind of the point. It’s another big step in his character - he realizes he’s more than just a (formerly) great swordsman, but a good negotiator and leader of men. He also finally rejects Cersei… which I suppose they can still work in, somehow, but I’m not sure how it’ll make sense given his capture in Dorne - he’s either going to be a prisoner (no choice) or be allowed to leave where he’ll go to King’s Landing (nowhere else to go).
The Poole storyline, as someone else pointed out, is mainly for Theon’s redemption. Aside from that it’s pretty much a sidenote… in any event, we haven’t even gotten the end of that plotline yet in the books.
Pretty much the only thing I’m glad they cut out is Brienne wandering the countryside looking for the girls. In the books its to show just had bad things have gotten for the littlefolk (and set up some stuff like the Hound) but they are pretty boring.
I’m also really sad we’re losing the Greyjoy stuff, since I found that interesting on its own merit (even if it doesn’t really seem to tie in with anything beyond getting Victarion with Dany) but if it was going to be ruined like they ruined Dorne, well… maybe its better it this way.
Jeyne being the daughter of a Lannister retainer raises the possibility that the whole fall-out with the Frey’s over the broken marriage contract was engineered by Tywin from the start. Talisa is just some random hottie that Robb falls for.
Really? I think the audience could figure out that Ramsey’s done something terrible to turn the once confident Theon into a wreck just fine without having to linger on torture scenes (and don’t forget the ridiculous Asha almost rescued him bit).
Brienne’s story in Feast is great, we get to see how fucked up the whole Riverlands have become, meet Sam’s dad, the Elder brother and (almost certainly) find out what happened the Hound, and the whole UnCat thing. I doubt it would have taken much more screentime than she got in the show as it is. Feast also has the Dorne chapters and the Ironborn.
I’m happy to bin Quentyn, and most of Meeren in general. But then again I found Dance much worse than Feast.
Taking this as true, they have still failed.
But I disagree with the premise. There were plenty of characters and events in the last couple of books that kept me very engaged and entertained.
The only stories that seemed entirely out of left field were Victarion, Young Griff, and Quentyn Martell. If needed, they could have been included but disposed of without significant time. Or they could have been written out completely.
Even then, there were some interesting aspects to those three stories. The biggest failure of the last two books was the Daenerys storyline, which was boring … as … hell. I groaned every time I turned the page to see a Daenerys chapter. Same with Bran—the show made the right decision with this plot.
Brienne’s wanderings could have been greatly abbreviated, but even she had some good moments, such as the Quiet Isle, the battle with Rorge and Biter, and the final confrontation with Lady Stoneheart. Jamie had some tedious storylines that could have been abbreviated too.
Everything else had good stuff in it:
— Cersei’s eternal plotting and failing, including (a) her obsession with Maggie the Frog’s prophecy, (b) her sexual shenanigans (Cersei and Taena Merryweather in bed together!), (c) the Falyse Stokeworth disaster (a fantastic plot for Bronn!), (d) much torture material for Qyburn, and (e) her arrest and breaking, ending with the soft parade.
— Arianne Martell’s seduction of Arys Oakheart and the disastrous abduction of Myrcella: This could have been dealt with briefly in the show. We didn’t even need Sand Snakes to appear until later.
— Lady Stoneheart
— The appearance of the fake Arya—that was a compelling and interesting story
— Wyman Manderly: A great character with two compelling scenes: (a) the escape of Ser Davos Seaworth and the wedding
— The double deception of Melisandre by Jon Snow and “For the Watch”
— Arya’s painstaking acts of revenge against Raff the Sweetling and Daeron the singer, and her first contract assignment
— The Blackfish’s escape from Riverrun
All of this would have been more than enough material for a season’s worth of episodes. You wouldn’t have needed to use most of the slow stuff. The problem is that they have made a lot of these things impossible without giving us anything better.
Arguably, they have made a lot of things worse. Who really needed to have Sansa raped by Ramsey? Who really needed to have the confrontation between the Sand Snakes and Jaime?
The point of Jeyne Westerling isn’t herself but the plotines that she makes possible. Also that her existence helps make some of Robb’s disastrous decisions make sense. And keeping alive the possibility that he might still have an heir.
Flashbacks have worked on TV in the past.
It’s been a long time since I read the books, so I’m hoping someone can refresh my memory on something spurred by the TV version.
The Sparrows arresting Ser Loras storyline, it’s a different character involved in that in the books right?
Maybe I missed this, I haven’t had my full attention on the show the last couple of weeks, but in the context of the show, what is Cersei’s endgame in setting the Sparrows on Loras? Is it purely just a play to separate Margarey from Tommen? If that’s the case I can’t decide if TV Cersei or book Cersei is the more idiotic. 
I hope so. Well… I might be done watching. I haven’t decided yet. Having Rat King’s Revenge on the menu might win me back a little.
I am really upset about the rape last night. And I’m really upset by so much of the commentary and reaction to it. So much of it has been so gross or so “Well, how did you not know it was coming?”
Just because it was telegraphed like crazy and I knew what happened to Jeyne Poole doesn’t mean it wasn’t horrifying to watch and stunned me as a viewer that they would go there AGAIN. It’s bad writing to use rape as drama. And not only that, it’s for THEON’S agency, apparently, not the very important POV female character. We didn’t have to “see” what we were shown (which thankfully was tame by GOT standards). They could have been engaged for a while. Maybe Ramsey could have held back like Tyrion did to try to mess with her head for a while.
It’s one thing to send Jaime and Bronn to Dorne to battle the Sand Fakes (my new favorite name for them) in a reenactment of the Star Wars kid videos, to have Loras AND Marg be in KL trouble, to have Jorah and Tyrion doing their condensed/combined thing, but it’s another to rape another woman (a girl, really) for no narrative purpose. We know Sansa was in trouble. We know Theon’s going to snap some day. We know Ramsey gives us Joffrey nostalgia. There was just no reason other than to do something shocking, and I’d really like for once the something shocking not involving gratuitous sexual violence. It’s not edgy at this point. It’s really fucking creepy.
I agree with all this. They handled this very badly. Just like the Jaime-Cersei scene from last season.
In the books, Cersei schemes to get her own lovers and companions to falsely accuse Margaery of adultery/treason. The tables get turned on Cersei when her accomplices are tortured and they confess they have really been sleeping with Cersei, and she gets arrested and Margaery is released.
Someone has to wash the corpses and she is the lowest rung in the totem pole i guess.
I’ve moved this post here from the other GoT thread.
Nm
Thanks Ascenray. I couldn’t quite recall the sequence on how it wound up with Cersei having to take her little stroll through King’s Landing. If the show keeps that, (hoping they do) presumably it will come about due to the work of Olenna as payback. That certainly seems to be how they are positioning it.