SPOILER WARNING If you only watch the show, this thread will spoil you of future events in HBO's Game of Thrones. Thread contains discussion of all books of the series A Song of Ice and Fire Click Here for the spoiler-free thread.
On May 20 2015 19:55 Ketch wrote: I do not have the feeling Arya and Jon will really start warging... they should have given hints by now in the show...
I really think we need to stop using the show as a basis for what could happen. The last 20 pages of this thread are basically a report of the many divergences of the show. The stories are changing, and while I have no doubt that the "main ending" will be the same, I think the paths to that ending may be different from the books.
Warging has had little to no coverage on the show. For now. The same was true for R+L = J, up until recently when they started dropping a lot of hints at once. Who is to say they won't do the same for warging?
On May 20 2015 19:55 Ketch wrote: I do not have the feeling Arya and Jon will really start warging... they should have given hints by now in the show...
I wish the wolves played more of a role in the show so that the connection that Sansa losing Lady left her relatively lost (compared to the others). I definitely don't see Arya warging, and if she does it will seem like an extension of some FM related magic. Jon still could though, he has a strong relationship with ghost and not explicitly stating he can warg would add to the stabbing scene's cliffhanger.
Yeah, but then "suprise he can warg" would be a huge deus ex machina for non-book readers, which would be a bit lame. So far, things are a bit more foreshadowed. It still could happen of course.
On May 20 2015 19:55 Ketch wrote: I do not have the feeling Arya and Jon will really start warging... they should have given hints by now in the show...
I really think we need to stop using the show as a basis for what could happen. The last 20 pages of this thread are basically a report of the many divergences of the show. The stories are changing, and while I have no doubt that the "main ending" will be the same, I think the paths to that ending may be different from the books.
Warging has had little to no coverage on the show. For now. The same was true for R+L = J, up until recently when they started dropping a lot of hints at once. Who is to say they won't do the same for warging?
They could, of course, but I had the feeling it was not really likely. They did not really emphasize the wolves in the show anymore. Also, Mr Warg himself, Bran, is not even in this season. That's why I got the idea that we are not going to see that
Besides, it is widely assumed that Jon will fully warg to Snow in the books - but that is not even sure either xD
On May 20 2015 19:55 Ketch wrote: I do not have the feeling Arya and Jon will really start warging... they should have given hints by now in the show...
I wish the wolves played more of a role in the show so that the connection that Sansa losing Lady left her relatively lost (compared to the others). I definitely don't see Arya warging, and if she does it will seem like an extension of some FM related magic. Jon still could though, he has a strong relationship with ghost and not explicitly stating he can warg would add to the stabbing scene's cliffhanger.
Yeah, but then "suprise he can warg" would be a huge deus ex machina for non-book readers, which would be a bit lame. So far, things are a bit more foreshadowed. It still could happen of course.
This. Without all the warging Jon did in the books, if he survives that way in the show viewers are going to call bullshit. The quality of the last few seasons is low already, but this season will just lower it more with such a thing.
On May 19 2015 19:23 Conti wrote: All the show-hate aside, what do you guys think they will do with Arya becoming a faceless man? I mean, in the books it's not an issue at all for her to get a new face. She'll still be Arya, have her POV chapters, her thoughts, her emotions, everything. Nothing would change for the reader.
In the show, they would have to cast entirely new actors to play her, and that rarely goes over very well for all kinds of reasons. Are they really going to do that? Are we going to see entire episodes with Arya being portrayed by some totally different actress? Or are they going to work around that somehow? I'm really curious.
My guess is that her scenes as a completely different character will not last long. If she is going to now get a new face , she is probably not going to live as a street urchin for 2-3 episodes like in the books but just go murder that merchant and come back and get blinded in ep9 or 10.
I suspect she will have a new face long enough to kill someone, and then change back immediately.
She will kill Meryn Trant at some point as he went to Bravos with Mace Tyrell to see the Iron Bank.
Regarding the rape scene, rape is a sensitive subject for lots of people. Sure Jeyne's fate was even worse, but it was one tiny part of two huge books and she is destroyed after it happens. They really worked hard to make a ridiculous scenario where Sansa can be raped when they cut or changed over 50% of two huge books. And I suspect that in a few episodes Sansa will act like it never happened just like Cersei did with Jaime.
It's a realistic outcome for Ramsay and Sansa in that scenario, it's just not one you can say is necessary. The book plot revolves highly on the northern lords who don't even exist in the show. The rape and torture of fake Arya is heard regularly by the lords of the north who are visiting and helps lower morale and loosen support for the Boltons. Without the lords even being mentioned on the show, there really isn't even anything to gain from marrying Ramsay to Sansa in the first place. Become enemies of the crown is a pretty poor trade off for having a figure head Stark bride. And even after going with the ill conceived Sansa in Winterfell plot, they had the option of having Sansa rescued before the bedding. Even if Sansa personally kills Ramsay the damage of having her family killed and then being raped by the son of the murderer makes it a pretty hollow "victory" at that point.
It didn't offend me, but in the end this is a show meant to be entertaining, and lots of people don't find that subject matter entertaining at all. My fiancée was already bored most of the season. Sansa was one of the last Starks alive and she basically said "Why am I watching this any more? Everyone who is left is either evil or a victim. Who is the hero at this point? I'm not really getting any entertainment from seeing the characters I care about get murdered, tortured or raped"
Couldn't really give her a good answer.
This is one of the biggest criticisms of Martin's writing as well. Fans will say, "Well it's more realistic! It's better because in most writing, the hero always wins!"
The problem is that story telling isn't about realism. If it was, it would be incredibly boring because 99% of life is quite boring from a story telling perspective. In reality, being different isn't making it better, it's just being hipster. Consistently eliminating POV/other interesting characters that can be seen as protagonists isn't engaging or interesting, but it's the opposite; by repeatedly having antagonists win in near comical fashion and engaging characters killed, all you do is drive the reader away.
Of course, the books seems to eventually get around to the protagonists actually being interesting or accomplishing things (and some sense of justice is eventually arriving), but it's just taking far too long. For the better part of three incredibly dense (and, for the most part, dull) books, we've had this happening, and when it goes on for so long, it gets boring.
The show, by virtue of being based on the books, seems to be having that problem as well.
It's one of the biggest criticisms and it's one of the biggest misconceptions. Martin isn't writing realistic fantasy, he's doing a deconstruction of it. Which means, take the tropes, analyze them, see how they work. Arya's story arc isn't realistic; she meets a bunch of extraordinary people, when realism would have her die in or near King's Landing at the end of book one. Instead her arc is a study of the notion of "initiation" that occurs in a lot of fantasy, when a young person travels around the fantasy world and becomes a better person because of what they see. Ned's character isn't realistic. He's a typical fantasy hero. A Game of Thrones displays the mechanism of that heroism, and provides a very unrealistic worst case scenario in order to have a reflexion about heroism. Is it convenient to have this type of character? How far are you willing to go to stick to it? How far should you be? This is true of everyone and everything.
Long story short, nobody ever died in Game of Thrones because of realism. They died to illustrate points about fantasy. People who dismiss ASOIAF because realism doesn't make good stories haven't been paying attention.
I don't disagree with this at all. ASoIaF is one of the better fiction series that has been written in a very long time, but, at least for me, there are some really frustrating aspects of it that keep it from sitting next to the very best in the fantasy genre.
The problem is that when you structure the series like Martin has (a huge amount of characters and story lines that you bounce between within each book) it just takes far too long and is really disengaging.
Can you really say that all the crap in the 4th and 5th books was necessary? Because I've heard near-universal criticism of the 4th and 5th books when compared to the first three, and I whole-heartedly agree. They're just awful, and instead of the first couple books, where I had to force myself to put the book down, with the last two, I had to force myself to pick the book up. All that extra stuff just adds to the frustrations that people have right now; the books being far too slow, the feeling that the bad guys are always winning (even though most of them have ended up dead or beaten), and a lack of characters that we care about anymore.
Seriously? That doesn't even make sense. Sansa knew who the Boltons were, and knew what she was getting into. She was offered a choice and chose to endure this. It's the very fact that she has agency that puts her in that position. In the scene with Myranda where she completely owns, you can clearly see a very different Sansa from season 1... But suddenly a completely expected rape happens, and her character is destroyed? I'm getting tired with this already.
Eh, that scene wasn't that great. The fault was either with Turner's performance or the script itself, but she came across as a terrified girl that barely held together a bluff against a probably unstable common girl.
The episode didn't bring her back to the useless spoiled brat she was in season one, but she still has yet to display any level of personal agency and real competence. Maybe she will in the next couple episodes.
You call them slow, I call them great at world building. You call them awful, I call them engaging. You call it 'the bad guys always winning', I see interesting things happening to interesting people, with both good and bad characters dying left and right. You say we don't have any characters we care about anymore, but for me I've always cared about Arya, Jon en Tyrion most.
I loved books 4 and to a lesser extent 5 (I never cared much for Dany, and a lot of her POV chapters seemed to be 'I want to be a good ruler but it's hard' over and over again).
I find GRRM's way of fleshing out literally every single character into an actual person and not just a stereotype or extra really refreshing. I find him playing with the 'good guys always win/live in the end' trope really refreshing. In fact, I tried reading The Wheel of Time recently after reading ASOIAF, and I hated the fact that characters never really felt in any danger. The same was true for LOTR for me. I know characters and good guys die, but it's much easier to tell when their part in the story is done. It's much easier to know in advance who lives and who dies, and that makes a lot of the more action oriented scenes very boring.
You are ofcourse entitled to your opinions about books 4 and 5 and the series as a whole, but try not to present them as if they were facts.
I'm not trying to present them as facts, but unless you've lived under a rock, you should know that these criticisms of books 4 + 5 are very, very widespread.
Also, you can call it "world building" all you want, but when it takes the better part of two books to do this, then it gets to be a little bit too much. And sure, some of the new characters have intriguing aspects to them, but constant turnover of characters isn't a good way to keep readers engaged. Again, you can be interested in it all you want, but these are extremely common and well-founded literary criticisms of the last two books, and I swear I even remember reading/seeing an interview where Martin said he made a mistake with how he structured books 4 + 5.
It has been a pretty mediocre season so far. I was hoping the show might hold its quality better than the books did (I especially disliked Feast). That may still be the case, but the episodes so far haven't been that great. I think most of it can be attributed to the source material that's also harder to adapt -- even if you like the "world building", it does not necessarily make for great TV.
Compared to season 4, at least three characters were lost that were especially great in the show: Oberyn, Tywin and The Hound. All of them had great castings as well. None of the new characters introduced in season 5 have had much of an impact yet. Additionally Tyrion -- who was the most consistently interesting character in books 1-3 and seasons 1-4 -- is on his grand tour of Essos. At least in the show we seem to be getting a vastly accelerated version instead of the agonizing slog filled with misery and self pity. (Come to think of it, there was plenty to dislike in Dance as well.) When it comes to ASoIaF, talking beats walking.
Of course, the source material doesn't excuse a terribly choreographed fight scene. Or Jaime's stupid non-plan. Or silly Sand Snakes. I didn't mind the decision to send Jaime to Dorne though.
The other changes have been a bit mixed. Having Sansa in Winterfell makes sense, but Littlefinger's plan seems to leave a few too many things to chance this time. Daenerys has been her boring self and Barristan dying saddens me. The latest Grey Worm + Missandei scene was bad, but overall they really haven't stolen any screen time at all. In King's Landing things seem to going Cersei's way a bit too easily, but of course we know that payback is coming sooner rather than later.
In the books, the lack of Martin's originally planned four year gap shows. Having the younger characters start out older and letting them age with the actors in the show makes the age problems less of an issue.
Going forward, the plot in Dorne can only improve. At least we should see more Bashir Doran. King's Landing is about to get interesting with Olenna there. Perhaps Meereen will also pick up. But I'm mostly looking forward to what's going to happen in The North. There should be plenty of book spoilers towards the end of the season with the battle between Stannis and Boltons.
Looking further we'll probably see the story compressed even more compared to the books. My understanding was that the seven book plan was from before Feast and Dance were split. Even if Martin eventually manages to finish in seven, it's 4 seasons for the first 3 books and then 3 - 4 seasons (as planned) for the remaining four. That's going to mean more cuts and streamlining.
On May 21 2015 05:02 AndreWiles wrote: They shoulda just killed off bronn and jamie in episode 4 with a snake bite, then they would have had enough time to include the greyjoy storyline.
Killing Jaime for the Iron Born? No way man Jaime is Azor Ahai reborn
Perhaps there is room for a split season 6 - focusing on Iron born, Dorne, Northren lords, Riverlands, all that good jazz. This season feels a bit thin... can only imagine what its like for folks that havent read the books
On May 21 2015 06:39 Emon_ wrote: Perhaps there is room for a split season 6 - focusing on Iron born, Dorne, Northren lords, Riverlands, all that good jazz. This season feels a bit thin... can only imagine what its like for folks that havent read the books
I think they've already confirmed that they're cutting a lot of those subplots (Northern Lords, Riverlands, Ironborn) from the show entirely.
On May 21 2015 05:02 AndreWiles wrote: They shoulda just killed off bronn and jamie in episode 4 with a snake bite, then they would have had enough time to include the greyjoy storyline.
Killing Jaime for the Iron Born? No way man Jaime is Azor Ahai reborn
On May 21 2015 06:39 Emon_ wrote: Perhaps there is room for a split season 6 - focusing on Iron born, Dorne, Northren lords, Riverlands, all that good jazz. This season feels a bit thin... can only imagine what its like for folks that havent read the books
I think they've already confirmed that they're cutting a lot of those subplots (Northern Lords, Riverlands, Ironborn) from the show entirely.
In trailer #2 of season 5 there was Selyse (Stannis' wife) lying on snowy ground with some unknown people around and looking unhappy. We know for a fact that Stannis took his wife with him for the battle. So its more likely that Stannis will lose and die, Selyse might've been looking at Boltons after defeat.
On May 19 2015 23:27 The_Red_Viper wrote: GRRM said his ending will be bittersweet, i am excited to see how he defines it :D
Kinda. He made some statements before the whole thing rose to the popularity it has now. I didn't want to mention it, because it goes even beyond the books, but in the end it's all speculation. There wasn't much sweetness to the stuff i read a couple of years ago but it was very cryptical... His ideas might have changed, but i trust in him to stay true to his original masterplan.
I would be interested in what this means
me too
Guys, this is completely out of my memory. There's a good chance it maybe tainted or flat out wrong! Don't hold it against me in 10 years, when we know the ending. Just consider it as speculation!
It was some Interview where he told the journalist, that the final image in his head is that when the snow melts, all that's left is a field of graves with a single raven flying over it or sitting on a gravestone? Something like that. Then he grinned. He's a very sarcastic person, it might mean nothing. Sounds very fitting to me, though.
My personal guess is that few characters will survive and it will be Rickon or Arya to finalize the Stark revenge. That has to happen. Bran maybe, but I don't trust the three eyed raven and Dany's not a safe bet either. I think everyone who enters the Game of Thrones will die (Hi Sansa).
He can't really kill everyone though. At some point, the story has to matter. Especially with all the legends, the stuff about the Great Other and R'hllor, the Others in general, etc... ending the story with everyone dying would be pretty shallow, if you ask me.
I recall him saying the ending would be bittersweet. I imagine the Starks will get revenge, but in the process they will almost be wiped out, and they will likely end up behaving very, very ruthlessly. Which would lead the reader to liking them less; at least some of them.
Just my two cents though.
One of my favorite theories about the ending I read on reddit was that the Starks would get their revenge eventually, but their name would die and and they would go down in history as the bad guys. Ned trying to take the throne, Robb the false king, Arya the assassin/murderer, Bran the evil sorcerer, Catelyn the undead mother, Sansa the adulteress and schemer, Jon the guy who didn't protect the wall properly.. Certainly fits the definition of bittersweet.
I would honestly get mad at an ending like that for the books for a week, then I'd probably accept it and enjoy it as a fitting ending to the books. Doesn't even seem that un-plausible either.
Did I miss something about Sansa? Shes not exactly Miss Strong independant woman in the books. A lot of people seems to have this idea that she will eventually be a major player on par with Littlefinger but thats more wishful thinking than anything else. Sansa has never been the strong Arya type that lashes out and takes matter into her own hands. Her MO has always been to go with the flow and try to stay alive. So thats why Sansa being raped (something that she was prepared for and willing to go through to get one step closer to ruling Winterfell) did not kill her entire characterization like some people have suggested.
Besides would you rather watch her wander a castle doing nothing and then cuddling with a snotty nosed brat at night? The show scenario is way more interesting. My guess is that she will kill Roose or Ramsay and Theon will help her flee, Briene will probably take Mances role which means she might die. Seems like Lady Stoneheart might not happen at this point. Its one of those things that book readers so desperatly want but I could see a lot of show watchers finding it extemely stupid and im kinda there with them.
Don't trust IMDB. It's user-generated content, and trolls have since found out that they can get a lot of attention by adding casting rumors like that to episodes. IMDB also "confirmed" Catelyn for episode 5.
Don't trust IMDB. It's user-generated content, and trolls have since found out that they can get a lot of attention by adding casting rumors like that to episodes. IMDB also "confirmed" Catelyn for episode 5.
Don't trust IMDB. It's user-generated content, and trolls have since found out that they can get a lot of attention by adding casting rumors like that to episodes. IMDB also "confirmed" Catelyn for episode 5.
just caught up to epi 3 of season 5. Just...why? why change it like this. I'm seriously considering not watching any further. Placing the real Sansa in Winterfell is such huge deviation with big consequences. Many things have irked me b4 (Selmy straight up saying who he is that kind of thing) But in season 5...where to being? still no news from Iron islands?? Where Victarion? Euron? Varys goin -with- Tryion? Jaime going to Dorne? The parts around Riverrun were among the best chapters! but this really made me think. Like the last drop or something Now im worried that by watching further, once we get passed book 5, ill know the ending (sort of) but it will be butchered beyond recognition.
On May 22 2015 06:31 Sent. wrote: I'm positively surprised that there was no "was it rape" discussion in this thread similar to the one we had about latest Cersei-Jamie intercourse.
There actually was some guy saying it wasn't rape because Sansa had to expect it to happen. You can't make this shit up sometimes.
EPT
Just consider it as speculation! 
