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explanations and theories on why they changed certain things...


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I disagree strongly with people who believe Lady Stoneheart has been cut from show. Just because she didn't appear on season 4 doesn't mean she has been cut from the show entirely. I expect the character to make appeareance during Season 5.

In the first 2 episode of first season, the producers spent significant time laying groundwork outlining the relationship between Jon and Cat, specifically Cat's open hatred of Jon. They would not have done that unless there is going to be some major payoff later in the books. I'm pretty certain that in the books and in show there is going to be a weepy reconcilation moment between Jon and Cat, after Jon's true parents are revealed to the world.

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I disagree strongly with people who believe Lady Stoneheart has been cut from show. Just because she didn't appear on season 4 doesn't mean she has been cut from the show entirely. I expect the character to make appeareance during Season 5.

In the first 2 episode of first season, the producers spent significant time laying groundwork outlining the relationship between Jon and Cat, specifically Cat's open hatred of Jon. They would not have done that unless there is going to be some major payoff later in the books. I'm pretty certain that in the books and in show there is going to be a weepy reconcilation moment between Jon and Cat, after Jon's true parents are revealed to the world.

Back then, they had no idea where the story was heading, so they were sticking as close to the source material as possible. Now that they know how the series ends, they can make the appropriate cuts.

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Reasons why:



1) Budget/finish filming on time.


2) Keeps most of the attention focussed on the designated stars.


3) Dumb it down for the casual viewer; a lot of them have time keeping track of the characters on screen and introducing even more characters from the book would even confuse them more. The duh-duh effect among too many viewers is also why they'll toss in an(other) unneeded porno scene instead of including more of the talky bits from the books. Boobies and wee-wees, just like massive explosions in other shows and films, get a lot more attention instead of a character repeating some book text.


4) Eliminate/merge/re-write certain characters and situations from the books in order to not clog up the show; GRRM has a lot of sidetracks going on in the books and there's absolutely no way they can fit all of them into only 10 episodes per year.


5) GRRM probably had to contractually cede a certain amount of creative/editorial control over ASOIAF to HBO; they do this with practically everything that goes from the printed page to the screen, hence the words "based on/adapted from the books/comics/etc by XXXX". No adaptation is ever 100% true to the book version and probably never will be.


6) Lots of other reasons too numerous to mention; they're not purposely trying to piss book fans off or insult GRRM. This is simply the way things are done in TV and movies. The only cure would have been to have 20 episodes per season right from the beginning but that was probably impossible to begin with due to the doubled onstruction costs and increased payments to the actors/production crews that would have resulted. HBO is big but it's not like they ever had the same kind of budget for GOT the way 20th Century Fox did with Star Wars.


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6) Lots of other reasons too numerous to mention; they're not purposely trying to piss book fans off or insult GRRM. This is simply the way things are done in TV and movies. The only cure would have been to have 20 episodes per season right from the beginning but that was probably impossible to begin with due to the doubled onstruction costs and increased payments to the actors/production crews that would have resulted. HBO is big but it's not like they ever had the same kind of budget for GOT the way 20th Century Fox did with Star Wars.

How is better for TV to change "Your Sister" instead of "Only Cat"?

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Better's got nothing to do with it. In a hyper-accelerated flashy-screen mass-media world where the average person now has the same attention span as a goddamn goldfish a couple of hundred thousand casual viewers could quite literally have said "who the hell is Cat?" because they just wouldn't remember Baelish referring to Catelyn by that name. back in the first season. People are dumb but they have to be catered to. Look at Idiocracy as a documentary, not as a weirdo comedy.



I don't like many, if not most, of the changes that HBO is making BTW. HBO's got more money than I do so they can go make up their own excuses for why too much of their product nowadays, including GOT, is far more like True Blood and far less like The Wire. And, yes, if I were the head writer it would have been a lot more of what was in the books and a lot less of appealing to the kind of dullards who yell out "SPOILERZ!" over a scene from a book series that began twenty years ago that they're too intellectually lazy to try to read. I'm just pointing out why as opposed to going along with the thinking that, as a reader of the books, HBO is on a mission to piss people like me off on purpose. They aren't. They really just following a formula to take care of business.


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Back then, they had no idea where the story was heading, so they were sticking as close to the source material as possible. Now that they know how the series ends, they can make the appropriate cuts.

Again, I disagree. The producers had basic outline of how the story will develop and how it will end. They knew where the story was heading. People sometimes make it sound like Producers have completely gone off the book, but if you look at all the major characters they are exactly in same place they are in the book. Jon is in the North as a future Lord Commander. Dany is still stuck in Essos with her Dragons. Tyrion has fled to Bravos. The final destination is the same as in the book, it is the path that changed.

In any we will find out coming season, whether Lady Stoneheart has been really dropped or not.

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How is better for TV to change "Your Sister" instead of "Only Cat"?

Because everybody (incl. casual viewers) know what a sister is. >99% also know that Sansa's mother is Lysa's sister.

If they had used "Only Cat" too much unsullied would've thought "Who was Cat again?".

btw: How is it worse? It contains the same information!

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Again, I disagree. The producers had basic outline of how the story will develop and how it will end. They knew where the story was heading. People sometimes make it sound like Producers have completely gone off the book, but if you look at all the major characters they are exactly in same place they are in the book. Jon is in the North as a future Lord Commander. Dany is still stuck in Essos with her Dragons. Tyrion has fled to Bravos. The final destination is the same as in the book, it is the path that changed.

In any we will find out coming season, whether Lady Stoneheart has been really dropped or not.

It was only recently that they sat down with GRRM and talked over where things were heading and were given the ending. All they had for the first season were the books already published. If Lady Stoneheart doesn't play a significant role to the end game, then they have no reason to include her, especially since they're planning on ending this thing in seven seasons.

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How is better for TV to change "Your Sister" instead of "Only Cat"?

I've been wondering, do we know how this line translated in other languages around the world? The show isn't made for just American audiences and this switch could have been made because book versions have it that way. There is also the reason posted already: how many viewers remember who Cat was with such a brief reference? Readers do because there had been mention of her recently in the books but also because reading involves different parts of memory/thinking than watching a show.

Btw, your avatar has really been busy these last few months :P

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Because everybody (incl. casual viewers) know what a sister is. >99% also know that Sansa's mother is Lysa's sister.

If they had used "Only Cat" too much unsullied would've thought "Who was Cat again?".

btw: How is it worse? It contains the same information!

If the book had used 'Your sister" and the show had said "Only Cat", the same people would be raising the same fuss.

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It was only recently that they sat down with GRRM and talked over where things were heading and were given the ending. All they had for the first season were the books already published. If Lady Stoneheart doesn't play a significant role to the end game, then they have no reason to include her, especially since they're planning on ending this thing in seven seasons.

No that's not correct. It's preposterous to think that producers would have started the series without knowing the basic structure of the story. The visit to GRRM was to get the DETATILED outline of various characters and storylines. D&D were given rights to produce the series by GRRM because they figured out who Jon's mother was, so I think it's only logical the ending of the story would have been discussed by both parties.

Again, we will know in this upcoming season.

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No that's not correct. It's preposterous to think that producers would have started the series without knowing the basic structure of the story. The visit to GRRM was to get the DETATILED outline of various characters and storylines. D&D were given rights to produce the series by GRRM because they figured out who Jon's mother was, so I think it's only logical the ending of the story would have been discussed by both parties.

Again, we will know in this upcoming season.

I mean look at the show when Tyrion is discussing sending Myrcella to Dorne with Cersei. He says they are going to send her there to be betrothed to Doran's second son. And lo and behold, now we have Doran with only one son, Trystane. Inclusion of something early on =/= importance of/adherence to that something down the road.

And even if they were laying the groundwork for some kind of moment of understanding down the road that hasn't been in the books yet, it doesn't mean it hasn't changed. Restrictions of budget and narrative sprawl that they more than likely were not thinking about in the earlier seasons are becoming more and more real as the seasons go on and the story expands.

ETA an even more pivotal example would be Tysha

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No that's not correct. It's preposterous to think that producers would have started the series without knowing the basic structure of the story. The visit to GRRM was to get the DETATILED outline of various characters and storylines. D&D were given rights to produce the series by GRRM because they figured out who Jon's mother was, so I think it's only logical the ending of the story would have been discussed by both parties.

Again, we will know in this upcoming season.

If you don't have a source to prove you're right, then you can't say that I'm wrong and should stop presenting your presumptions as fact.

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I mean look at the show when Tyrion is discussing sending Myrcella to Dorne with Cersei. He says they are going to send her there to be betrothed to Doran's second son. And lo and behold, now we have Doran with only one son, Trystane. Inclusion of something early on =/= importance of/adherence to that something down the road.

And even if they were laying the groundwork for some kind of moment of understanding down the road that hasn't been in the books yet, it doesn't mean it hasn't changed. Restrictions of budget and narrative sprawl that they more than likely were not thinking about in the earlier seasons are becoming more and more real as the seasons go on and the story expands.

ETA an even more pivotal example would be Tysha

I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I was really referring to the fate of major characters like Jon, Dany, Stannis, Tyrion and Cate. I'm pretty confident in making prediction that the end point of those major characters will stay more or less the same. Even after 4 seasons, with all the changes that have been made, the state of those characters haven't altered too significantly from the book. They are all in the same place as they are in the book.
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We know that D&D know what GRRM's endgame is. The logical assumption is that, knowing how things will turn out, they can make cuts.



Aside from that there are a few reasons why certain things might have been changed - budgetary constraints, actor availability (or lack of it) & difficulty dealing with a particular actor - I'm not pointing any fingers here, just putting it in because this does happen in tvland - among them.



I seriously doubt they are purposely trying to piss of the book reading purists. Being completely honest here, they could do a page for page adaptation & there would still be people bitching about how it wasn't what they imagined. HBO doesn't have unlimited bucks to spend on one show, no matter how popular said show may be, so inevitably things will get cut.


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We know that D&D know what GRRM's endgame is. The logical assumption is that, knowing how things will turn out, they can make cuts.

I think a lot of the anger results from destroyed theories. I expected that Jeyne Westerling turns out to be pregnant. Well, maybe she is could be the POV of the prologue of WoW. Either way not very satisfying.

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I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I was really referring to the fate of major characters like Jon, Dany, Stannis, Tyrion and Cate. I'm pretty confident in making prediction that the end point of those major characters will stay more or less the same. Even after 4 seasons, with all the changes that have been made, the state of those characters haven't altered too significantly from the book. They are all in the same place as they are in the book.

This is true. They are in the same place but I would say the show has shown that there wasn't as much information at the start of the series about how everything was going to play out over the long haul as there was later in the series. Not even for the major characters. I'm basing this specifically on the inconsistencies. At the start of the series, things were included such as Tysha, Trystane being the younger sibling and even a reference to LS (Bran's dream of Cat looking pale and weird and yelling at him in the tree is such clear foreshadowing I don't know what else to call it). They shot these things at the time with the knowledge they had then which seems different now that they have knowledge about EVERYTHING. Tysha was not brought up again, Trystane is now the only child and LS hasn't been dragged out of the river. At least not at this time. I would say the changes being made now are a direct result of understanding how some story lines will play out that wasn't shared at the start of the series.

I think a lot of the anger results from destroyed theories. I expected that Jeyne Westerling turns out to be pregnant. Well, maybe she is could be the POV of the prologue of WoW. Either way not very satisfying.

I agree. If the books had come out first, then no one would bemoan the changes on the show but having the show kill certain theories is definitely not as satisfying for book readers.

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In the books, black people played prominent roles (more like the 4th and 5th book). Yet in the series, you would think that only White, Tan, and Bronze people existed! The only exceptions thus far have been Salladhor Saan, and I think one lone female extra in the Qarth waterfront.


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