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It's hard to tell what GRRM was going for with Quentyn because he's not done yet and Quentyn's gonna show up in the next book minus one arm but riding a dragon 
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May 3, 2015 09:28
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Lycus posted:They seem to be foreshadowing Brienne having a confrontation with Stannis. GaussianCopula posted:She says at least once per episode "I want to kill Stannis". It's all very subtile. Is this really foreshadowing though? Arya said she was going to kill Joffrey. Hell, Brienne saying she wants to kill Stannis says to me that that won't happen because they'll want to do a twist. It's like how Melisandre says Stannis is Azor Ahai, which is one of the reasons we know he isn't.
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May 3, 2015 09:48
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Pedro De Heredia posted:Quentyn would have probably worked better in the show than in the books. I don't get all this Quentyn hate. Yes he failed his quest, so what? He serves multiple purposes. Not only does he allow Dany to make the choice between Mereen and Westeros, demonstrate that Dany puts her pleasures above strategy and sets the dragons free to participate in the Battle of Mereen but his failure also allows Doran to to go all-in on Aegon and thereby give Aegon a pretty decent powerbase in Westeros. BreakAtmo posted:Is this really foreshadowing though? Arya said she was going to kill Joffrey. Hell, Brienne saying she wants to kill Stannis says to me that that won't happen because they'll want to do a twist. It's like how Melisandre says Stannis is Azor Ahai, which is one of the reasons we know he isn't. Will she kill Stannis? Probably not, as this would be a major, major departure from the books and whatever happens to Stannis there. But it makes it 100% certain that they will have some kind of confrontation. My guess is that she will be in some kind of Asha role after Sansa was rescued from Winterfell and Stannis prepares for the battle. (as seen in the preview chapter for WoW) GaussianCopula fucked around with this message at 09:55 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 09:51
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I actually forgot all about this character until this post. after my first read through I thought he was a Greyjoy because the only thing I could remember about his character was "wants dragons/dany" and I guess I got him confused with Euron or something?
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May 3, 2015 10:09
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GaussianCopula posted:I don't get all this Quentyn hate. Yes he failed his quest, so what? He serves multiple purposes. Not only does he allow Dany to make the choice between Mereen and Westeros, demonstrate that Dany puts her pleasures above strategy and sets the dragons free to participate in the Battle of Mereen but his failure also allows Doran to to go all-in on Aegon and thereby give Aegon a pretty decent powerbase in Westeros. None of these purposes justify making Quentyn a POV character and dedicating multiple chapters to him. Y'know, the bloat people talked about earlier. He is a new character who barely manages to cross paths with another character before he dies. This is the bloat people talked about earlier.
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May 3, 2015 10:45
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Pedro De Heredia posted:None of these purposes justify making Quentyn a POV character and dedicating multiple chapters to him. Y'know, the bloat people talked about earlier. He is a new character who barely manages to cross paths with another character before he dies. First of all he has only three chapters which each contains important information. The first one outlines his quest and Doran Martell's plan going forward, the second illustrates very clearly the lack of loyalty a sellsword has, an update on the campaign against Astapor and Mereen and identifies the source for the spread of the bloody flux that is going to haunt Mereen. The third of course is the one where he releases the dragons. This "bloat" is what makes ASOIAF differnt from other fantasy novels, as GRRM dedicates a lot more time to worldbuilding and events that would be unnecessary if he only wanted to tell the "main story" of an Ice Elf invasion that gets defeated by super arians with dragons.
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May 3, 2015 11:08
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GaussianCopula posted:First of all he has only three chapters which each contains important information. The first one outlines his quest and Doran Martell's plan going forward, the second illustrates very clearly the lack of loyalty a sellsword has, an update on the campaign against Astapor and Mereen and identifies the source for the spread of the bloody flux that is going to haunt Mereen. The third of course is the one where he releases the dragons. Quentyn is a character that does need to exist, but the only reason I can think of that he needed to be a POV is if the Tattered Prince is going to be an important character in the future and needed to actually appear in ADWD.
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May 3, 2015 11:26
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There is no justification for Quentyn. He is just absolutely horrible in every way.
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May 3, 2015 11:38
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GaussianCopula posted:First of all he has only three chapters which each contains important information. The first one outlines his quest and Doran Martell's plan going forward, the second illustrates very clearly the lack of loyalty a sellsword has, an update on the campaign against Astapor and Mereen and identifies the source for the spread of the bloody flux that is going to haunt Mereen. The third of course is the one where he releases the dragons. Doran's plan could have been shown more effectively or efficiently in someone else's POV, the lack of loyalty of a sellsword is not really important new information, the Astapor and Mereen stuff could have been shown more effectively or efficiently in someone else's POV.... We could go on and on. Not only could all of this 'important' information have been presented elsewhere, but Quentyn is not an interesting character. And neither is anyone he interacts with. I mean, Sansa's chapters convey plenty of important things, but no one actually liked her as a character. Purpose is not the same as execution. We could also go even further, and ask why this information needs to be conveyed, or rather, why it's information. Why does bloody flux need to haunt Mereen? Why does Doran Martell need to have this elaborate plan? Why is this in the story? Does it add more than it subtracts? I wouldn't typically think that about a book, but we're talking about a book adapted into a show, and we're discussing why the show is removing things. quote:This "bloat" is what makes ASOIAF differnt from other fantasy novels, as GRRM dedicates a lot more time to worldbuilding and events that would be unnecessary if he only wanted to tell the "main story" of an Ice Elf invasion that gets defeated by super arians with dragons. This isn't true at all. If you look at the first three books, they're very well executed. There's a logic to most of it, the POV characters are very interesting people who are taking action, and/or interacting with interesting people who are taking action. We are able to get to know both the POV characters as well as the people who are not POV characters, since we see them through POV eyes. There's many POV characters but plenty of time is dedicated to them. The bloat starts in the last two books because they're not as well thought out. You start having more and more POV characters, but now many of them aren't very interesting, nor are the people who they are interacting with very interesting, their plots are increasingly disconnected from the other plots. And then we don't even spend that much time on them individually, but way too much time on them collectively. There's nothing mysterious or controversial about this, anyway. It's well known that GRRM had problems writing these books, that he wasn't sure how to make many things work, how to convey certain information, etc. What people are saying is: hey, maybe he wasn't actually able to solve these problems. ASOIAF is not successful because of worldbuilding, it's successful because it had a good balance of worldbuilding, action and character-driven plot, and themes. The last two books gently caress this balance up, which is why they're not as good. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 12:16 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 11:50
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Pedro De Heredia posted:Whatever point GRRM was trying to make with Quentyn, creating a new character, devoting multiple POV chapters to him, and then just having him fail completely and be burned to death is a really dumb way of going about it. Replace burned to death with crushed to death and you have Oberyn, right? I mean, if Oberyn wasn't supposed to be a mystery he would have had POV chapters.
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May 3, 2015 11:55
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Oberyn would have probably been a more interesting POV character, because he was an interesting character. The POV characters are an easy way of seeing how these books have become more bloated and ill-thought out. How many POV characters did it take to introduce Stannis Baratheon and tell that whole story? One very well-written prologue POV, and then Davos. That's it. Efficient, economic storytelling. You use the first chapter as an exposition dump, and then set up three characters, with Stannis being the focus of the two others (Davos and Melisandre).* How many POV characters did Dorne have in AFFC and ADWD? Four. Areo, Arianne, Arys, and Quentyn. But there's only like what, 8-10 chapters total, and two of those people are dead. We don't actually spend more than a couple of chapters in two books with any of these new people. Seriously? You couldn't maybe have one Dorne POV character, and introduce the rest of the plot through this character? Plot things in such a way that you don't "need" all these additional perspectives? Any decent editor would have said "umm, just do Arianne chapters". Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 12:46 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 12:38
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In It For The Tank posted:I'm amazed they resisted the temptation to make a reference to Talisa. Pretty sure talisa stuff is being de-emphasised or cut, as they skipped the major revelation scene from Jaime last season while Tyrion was in jail, in favour of *beetles*. Won't make any sense now, there's just Shea references.
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May 3, 2015 12:48
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GaussianCopula posted:This "bloat" is what makes ASOIAF differnt from other fantasy novels, as GRRM dedicates a lot more time to worldbuilding and events that would be unnecessary if he only wanted to tell the "main story" of an Ice Elf invasion that gets defeated by super arians with dragons. That bloat is a pillar of the genre since Tolkien sat down and invented an elvish language. But even JRR had the sense to put th Silmarillion apart from the rest, GRR seems to want to sprinkle it in in ever increasing portions as the series goes on.
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May 3, 2015 14:33
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:That bloat is a pillar of the genre since Tolkien sat down and invented an elvish language. But even JRR had the sense to put th Silmarillion apart from the rest, GRR seems to want to sprinkle it in in ever increasing portions as the series goes on. debatable, JRR had plenty of that poo poo in the main trilogy. Tom Bombadil, tons of loving singing, etc
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May 3, 2015 14:52
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this_is_hard posted:debatable, JRR had plenty of that poo poo in the main trilogy. Tom Bombadil, tons of loving singing, etc The Two Towers is even structured just like AFFC/ADWD are (divided based on geographical rather than chronological order).
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May 3, 2015 14:57
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wooger posted:Pretty sure talisa stuff is being de-emphasised or cut, as they skipped the major revelation scene from Jaime last season while Tyrion was in jail, in favour of *beetles*. You're thinking of Tysha. Talisa was Robb's show-only noble Volantene wife who was murdered with zero ramifications to the larger story because she was a terrible character who didn't fit the setting at all. If she was a Maegyr, one of the most powerful families in Volantis, you'd think there'd be a reaction from her death. It wasn't a secret that she was the wife of the King in the North, and the Freys weren't exactly subtle about what they did (RobbWind paraded aboud, Sansa knew Catelyn was stripped naked and thrown into a river).
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May 3, 2015 15:39
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I still don't get why they didn't just go with Jeyne Westerling. It would have worked fine.
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May 3, 2015 18:13
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Why did they swap Jeyne for Talisa anyway? I assume there was some reason. It certainly makes Robb even dumber than he is in the books, since he gains literally nothing from marrying Talisa, whereas with Jeyne he at least gets a few knights, soldiers, and a castle.....and she isn't some foreigner. Is it because Jeyne is alive in the books and might feature more later, and they wanted to kill Robb's wife at the wedding or what? VVVV Why would they need to include her backstory? edit 2: I don't think it was a dumb change necessarily, I just wondered about the reasoning, I assume there is one. Zippy the Bummer fucked around with this message at 18:16 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 18:14
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Mortabis posted:I still don't get why they didn't just go with Jeyne Westerling. It would have worked fine. There's no reason to use that specific character if you're not going to include her backstory and her backstory is bad and dumb.
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May 3, 2015 18:14
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Zippy the Bummer posted:Why did they swap Jeyne for Talisa anyway? I assume there was some reason. It certainly makes Robb even dumber than he is in the books, since he gains literally nothing from marrying Talisa, whereas with Jeyne he at least gets a few knights, soldiers, and a castle.....and she isn't some foreigner. Is it because Jeyne is alive in the books and might feature more later, and they wanted to kill Robb's wife at the wedding or what? The story of a noble man falling in love with "lowly" but mysterious woman setting aside his betrothed is probably easier for show watchers to understand. Added to that the show wanted to make it a longer love story pre-wedding and give her a more empowered character compared to Jeyne who is more an example of the traditional woman role. An important factor was probably the fact that people liked "new Shae" in season 1 and so they decided to make this change. Personally I'm not a big fan of the change, because in the books Robb is motivated by honor to wed her, showing the same weakness as his father. In the show it's for love, which is pretty outrageous for a son of Eddard Stark, who did not marry the woman he loved.
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May 3, 2015 18:41
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GaussianCopula posted:The story of a noble man falling in love with "lowly" but mysterious woman setting aside his betrothed is probably easier for show watchers to understand. Added to that the show wanted to make it a longer love story pre-wedding and give her a more empowered character compared to Jeyne who is more an example of the traditional woman role. An important factor was probably the fact that people liked "new Shae" in season 1 and so they decided to make this change. I too make the exact same life decisions as my parents did. In any case, the way the show did it showcases that either choice of keeping your word until the bitter end or following your heart will get you killed. Even in a world with magic there are no tricks, everyone dies and it won't even be a good death. Because the world is cruel.
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May 3, 2015 18:53
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It's heavily suggested that Jeyne Westerling's mother was manipulating the situation with Jeyne and Robb, causing Robb to break his pact with the Freys, in order to get favor with Tywin Lannister. That whole conspiracy is just absent from the show.
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May 3, 2015 19:05
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Zippy the Bummer posted:Why did they swap Jeyne for Talisa anyway? I assume there was some reason. It certainly makes Robb even dumber than he is in the books, since he gains literally nothing from marrying Talisa, whereas with Jeyne he at least gets a few knights, soldiers, and a castle.....and she isn't some foreigner. Is it because Jeyne is alive in the books and might feature more later, and they wanted to kill Robb's wife at the wedding or what? Well, the contrast in the show is between marrying someone for political gain (someone you don't even know), and living your own life and marrying for love. So if he gained something from it, it would take away from that point.
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May 3, 2015 20:03
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Zippy the Bummer posted:VVVV Why would they need to include her backstory?
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May 3, 2015 20:18
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fleshweasel posted:It's heavily suggested that Jeyne Westerling's mother was manipulating the situation with Jeyne and Robb, causing Robb to break his pact with the Freys, in order to get favor with Tywin Lannister. That whole conspiracy is just absent from the show. Well that's just not true at all. edit: Brienne got more chapters in AFFC than Dorne or Greyjoy bros have had lumped together. Anyone who wants to point fingers Hotah's single chapter per book as a sign of bloat is a nutter. kater fucked around with this message at 20:54 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 20:40
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If we got both tons of bloat/"Worldbuilding" and a completed story, I think people would be a lot more forgiving about the bloat. Instead each book takes exponentially longer because GRRM feels the need to increase the character count exponentially.
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May 3, 2015 20:44
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meristem posted:Remember, at that point, they were still touchy about making changes, and Martin was throwing tantrums about killing such important characters as some Dothraki whose name I can't recall. It's possible this factored in. Normally, I'd say that considering its his books they are adapting, he may have something planned for the character. But then again, both these characters have not been mentionned in how many books? And are any of Dany's Dothraki still alive anyways? They feel pretty drat irrelevent by now.
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May 3, 2015 20:59
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Dalael posted:And are any of Dany's Dothraki still alive anyways? They feel pretty drat irrelevent by now. They're alive, they're just occasionally-seen extras. They were doing prisoner transport in episode 2. They possibly should have kept that dude with some lines from S2 on the recurring cast. Lycus fucked around with this message at 21:08 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 21:04
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Dalael posted:Normally, I'd say that considering its his books they are adapting, he may have something planned for the character. But then again, both these characters have not been mentionned in how many books? And are any of Dany's Dothraki still alive anyways? They feel pretty drat irrelevent by now. The comparison to Silmarillion someone posted upthread is entirely apt.
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May 3, 2015 21:11
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meristem posted:Mark my words, Dany spends the first half of TWOW solving the differences between the 'faithful' Dothraki (those that had followed her to Qarth) and the 'betrayers'. There is a lot of 'worldbuilding' and exotic customs. While the reader yawns. the Silmarillion wasn't even so much 'worldbuilding' as it was like...a history book. IT was definitely closer to AWoIAF than it was to the RIverlands chapters from AFFC/ADWD
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May 3, 2015 21:23
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Dalael posted:Normally, I'd say that considering its his books they are adapting, he may have something planned for the character. But then again, both these characters have not been mentionned in how many books? One of them leads the group that Dany found at the end of Book 5.
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May 3, 2015 21:43
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kater posted:Well that's just not true at all. There were those red herrings about Talisa writing to her mother but none of it was ever substantiated. I doubt we will ever hear anything about the Maegyr family or whatever they were called.
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May 3, 2015 21:47
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Another week to go before an episode that wasn't leaked, huh? At least we'll have something new to chew on. It'll help that we'll be mid-season and most of the setup will be done.
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May 3, 2015 21:55
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computer parts posted:There's no reason to use that specific character if you're not going to include her backstory and her backstory is bad and dumb. Not as bad or dumb as Talisa's.
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May 3, 2015 22:55
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Mortabis posted:Not as bad or dumb as Talisa's. Hers has the benefit of being simple.
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May 3, 2015 23:13
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computer parts posted:Hers has the benefit of being simple. Simpler, maybe, but once you think about it for more than 5 seconds it starts to fall apart, as mentioned before. Plus the whole Talisa storyline makes Robb look much, much stupider than Jeyne Westerling's did.
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May 3, 2015 23:27
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Mortabis posted:Not as bad or dumb as Talisa's. Talisa's back story is modern and cliche, it lured unsuspected viewers to invest in these characters mahahaa.
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May 3, 2015 23:30
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FourLeaf posted:
No, they both make him look like idiots. The former doesn't make Tywin look so  -y though.
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May 3, 2015 23:44
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You'd think the TV north wouldn't be big fans of House Stark these days. Robb basically got loads of their men killed by breaking his vow to marry the Frey. I doubt they'd see it as romantic and more like a nobleman only thinking about himself drat the consequences. Shouldn't the North remember that poo poo?
hottubrhymemachine fucked around with this message at 23:46 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 23:44
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therobotking posted:You'd think the TV north wouldn't be big fans of House Stark these days. Robb basically got loads of their men killed by breaking his vow to marry the Frey. I doubt they'd see it as romantic and more like a nobleman only thinking about himself drat the consequences. Shouldn't the North remember that poo poo? Yes, but on the other hands the Starks didn't flay people over tax collection. And it was the Boltons who did a lot of the killing.
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May 3, 2015 23:59
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