Le Cygne

It narrows the scope of what should be an epic story. Cramming it in makes it seem small, like a momentary spat. And they didn't just cram it, they changed the very nature of it, so it doesn't make sense even as a momentary spat. Something that bugs me about LOTR is that he didn't include the Houses of Healing scene with Faramir and Eowyn in the theatrical version. It's the resolution for two main characters! Scrap a couple minutes of endless orc closeups and there's time. Do the changes, or added stuff, or omitted stuff take away from the beauty of the story the author told? If so, reconsider. Find room for what matters, and don't stray from the original story when it's well-loved for many years.

Yes, it could have been much better. There was the outline as well as many references within LOTR (Gandalf, Galadriel, Aragorn, and others talked about the second age). Given the choice of listening to the master storyteller or flying by the seat of their pants, they chose the latter. (Also the same for the Hobbit movies, I kept thinking, you had a perfectly fine story! What is this mess? The simplicity of The Hobbit was its charm. Tolkien knew what he was doing.)

Well, I am excited about a Dunk and Egg series, and I wasn't about other shows. There are different sorts of viewers out there. D and E is more my kind of show. It makes you think, while at the same time, there's laughter and a lightening of the spirit that even in difficult times, there's friendship and courage. I like that GRRM went there with a more classic storytelling feel to these adventures, and think it would translate quite well to the screen. (Live action for this one!)

Agree, I think Aragorn always wanted to be king, when the time was right, and on his own terms. He had quite the example before him to learn from, so he was wise to tread carefully. I think Jon has demonstrated that he wants to lead, he wants to make a difference in the world, so making him a park ranger after murdering family is pretty damned arbitrary. There's nothing that says perfect fit about Jon's time with the wildlings, nor Dany's time with the Dothraki. Ygritte and Drogo would probably still be alive, if not for Jon and Dany. There was love in those relationships, they helped them find themselves. There was something about the two wild ones that struck a chord in the two noble ones. Ygritte herself wanted to see the castles in Jon's world. Drogo wanted to take Dany to her castle, too. There was growth all around in the books, but the show tossed it all out.

Jon's big question was always "who am I?" so how does finding out he's a Targ fit with his Stark identity. He's a dragon, he's a wolf, and the wildlings are his "no man's land" where he explores the different parts of himself. Also he's got to deal with not really being human anymore on top of all of this. Lots to be explored there, but the show just blew all of that off. I think the books will end very differently because they will account for all of this.

I think she has self doubt for a good reason, her good intentions, she starts out wanting something good, like GRRM said ("George told me that Daenerys wants equality for everyone, she wants to be at the same level as her people") but finds the reality of ruling very difficult. So she second guesses herself. (There's also her repeated longing for a simpler life, living in a house with a red door, that showed us that she envisioned another kind of life for herself, but the show always shirked showing the interior lives of the characters, which are so important, and could have been shown in many ways.) GRRM said his ending will be very different from the show. I think Bran will perhaps be lord of Winterfell, because he's so tied to the north, but that's just my feeling about the story. None of us really knows how things will end for everyone, it could be any number of ways, as long as it fits what went before. With Dany, if she does fall, I think it would be a much better story for her good intentions to be her undoing, that's tragedy. Instead they gave us farce. Most of the audience liked Dany. As badly as they bungled the character, there's something good that shone through. It was a stupid season, insulting to the audience in many ways, but what they did to Dany was a glaring mistake, as shown by the instant audience backlash. They stated emphatically she's not mad!, then suddenly, on a dime, made her madder than a hatter. Their game of going in different directions regardless of what had gone before ("creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen") ran into the wall of the show ending.

Yes, agreed. That's not what Tolkien was doing with Aragorn. He rose to the occasion when the time was right. Everything he learned to that point served him well. They were such bad writers, if only they had copied something good (well, like the source material). But they figured they could do better, which was their undoing. Often you could see they were going in one direction, only to go into another, without regard for what came before. When that's multiplied with various characters and plots, it's nonsense. I am kind of excited about Dunk and Egg, because GRRM is involved. Blackwater was a standout episode, and it could have been better had they not tied his hands with their nonsense. After that, they tied his hands completely, the butterflies were dragons, and the magic of the original material was long gone. I love that he tried to make something beautiful out of it, even so.

Oh good point, one need only look to how Grey Worm, the Prince of Dorne, and Yara (at least Asha was spared being in the show) reacted (or didn't react) to see how forced it all was. It's like they pinned notes on Tyrion, Dany, and Jon: You good, you bad, you stupid. The rest of you, play into it in somehow, or just stand there and go along with it. Don't ask why. There is no reason. Yes!

Just seeing this... Make it light-hearted, while also telling a good story, and they could do a short season per story. These are really good stories. I'd watch! https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/game-of-thrones-dunk-and-egg-series-1235372243/

They basically punished all the other characters for not honoring Tyrion in the books. Tyrion was their self-insert character. They will not be ignored! Jaime was a rapist, but Tyrion was not, the opposite of the books. Brienne lost her story, because Jaime lost his. Sansa rejected Tyrion, so she lost her own story. Sandor lost his story, because Sansa lost hers. And so on. Tyrion must look good! Now we know Dany does not suffer fools, she's not gonna be undone by Tyrion, not easily, anyway. And if she is, she's gonna put up a good fight. Not go bonkers over a fool who then is fooled into killing her. They even absolved Tyrion of murdering Dany.

Good point, he's a main character who drives multiple plots with his barely concealed malevolence. He's narcissistic, misogynistic, power hungry... all these things bump up against other characters in his way, and move things along. Turn him into a saint, and suddenly it all falls apart. So they had to change everyone else's story to fit this new St. Tyrion utter nonsense. So many characters lost their stories because of this, and they can't tell stories of their own. So they just plugged in random plots, which are extremely jarring and unsatisfying, the appeal of the books was the characterization, and how that drove the story, and take that away, and it's just jingling keys at the audience.

Indeed. The show just made no sense. It was like someone threw random characters and random plots at the screen, and mixed them up with an eggbeater. They never actually told a story. Characters are supposed to drive the story. But here, nonsensical plot drives the story. You can't believe any of it would ever really happen, it's a house of cards and not even from the same deck.

Here are good examples of "close reading" - Octavia Cox is a professor at Oxford who does a great job stepping through text in works of literature, staying very close what the author is saying, to find meaning. Very interesting stuff, and she explores Jane Austen and other romances on her channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DrOctaviaCox

Exactly. It's just the way he talks. Sandorspeak, we called it. People rarely say what they mean, especially him. She thinks of him as her protector, as does he. He talks beastly, but she kinda likes it (just like in Cocteau and Disney). She kissed the Hound and she liked it, a story of a knight and a fair maiden, by Sansa Stark. Also... when the author has a picture of the two characters as Beauty and the Beast like the movie poster on the wall of his office (as in this case), that's a nice little nod.

What I'm saying is I don't think what went down on the show even remotely resembles the book plot, because it's just too stupid. Tyrion is manipulating him, and Jon should know this. It makes no sense that Dany would kill Jon's family. Dany is Jon's family, too. These characters have been wanting this family connection all series long, then when they get together they kill or leave them. It's not a satisfying story.

Putting a woman down like a mad dog, and pretending that is love, is stupid and insulting. That they didn't see this is just more proof they were really bad at this. A child could have told them. I think the books have to be a lot different. He came right out and said they would be.

I didn't see HOTD or read about it, but that doesn't sound very good. I didn't see much of redeeming value in Fire and Blood, in terms of the women's stories, so I decided not to watch. I would be interested in Dunk and Egg, if it's developed properly! I think it needs a light touch, there's a lot of humor in it, as well as a lot of fun sexuality. This isn't rocket science, but they always get it wrong. Good point about casting, Dunk is supposed to be quite good looking so make sure you get that right. They have to give the women something to look at! They seem to forget this a lot.

There were so many problems with what they did, but essentially they were just bad at telling stories. And since there was plenty of source material (even though the story didn't have an end), they didn't listen to stories well, either. Like, the basic journeys. Arya, the first thing that comes to mind is she is a pack animal. That's emphasized many times in the books. Arya is a she-wolf who loses her pack, then finds a new one, then loses them, too! She even says this! She gets mad! And she gets revenge. So... what does the audience want to see? You want to see her belong again, and gain the wisdom to know that revenge is not satisfying, but justice is good. Instead they blew off her main connection, which was with Jon Snow (again, the book is filled with her thinking about him), and she never learns a damn thing, then blows him off (in the end, Jon asks her to please come see him, and she's like, gotta run!) Sansa, the first thing that comes to mind is she loves romantic stories, but never gets to have one of her own. This is a reasonable thing to want, even in Westeros. She has a Beauty and the Beast story, Sansa and the Hound, that shows her coming of age, as she matures into a woman, and learns lessons, while exploring her sexuality in a positive way. The showrunners stumbled over it in the beginning, but this tale as old as time was way over their heads, and there's this long slog where she's just the showrunners' punching bag. In the end, like Arya, she never learns a damn thing, she's outright nasty much of the time, and she's the ice queen, all alone with her tiara. We could go on and on.

Good for him (the bold). I agree, nope. It seems like such a simple thing, to just show women are people, but some showrunners/directors can't be bothered to imagine what it's like to be one (even in this case, when the source material DID bother to imagine that). Just saw The Doors movie (it's bad, don't bother) and there were naked women everywhere but only one butt shot of Jim Morrison. The story was about how women wanted him, and yet... the director never bothered to show what they wanted to see.

Just seeing this, from August, GRRM talking about differences: Will your upcoming books diverge from “Thrones,” the TV series? A lot of this story comes to me as I write it. I always knew once the show got beyond my books — which honestly I did not anticipate — they would start going in directions that the books are not going to go in. Now, as I’m writing the books and I’m making more and more progress and it’s getting longer, ideas are coming to me and characters are taking me in directions that are even further from where the show went. So I think what you’re going to find is, when “Winds of Winter” and then, hopefully, “Dream of Spring” come out, that my ending will be very different. And there will be some similarities, some big moments that I told David and Dan about many years ago, when they visited me in Santa Fe. But we only had like two, three days there, so I didn’t tell them everything. And even some of the things I told them are changing as I do the writing. So they will be different. And then it’ll be up to the readers and the viewers to decide which one they like better, and argue about it. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/arts/television/george-rr-martin-house-of-the-dragon.html

Ah so this is where the Tolkien fans are hanging out. Did anyone get turned on to Tolkien thanks to Led Zeppelin? Seriously, I don't know if they led me to it or just enhanced the experience. I remember the friends who were reading it were convinced pipe weed was another kind of weed. When did I first read it, I think maybe 13. I still enjoy The Hobbit, I never thought of it as a kid's story, just as something written more like a fairy tale. Ramble On!

Two dead men! Dead men chapters are easy! I am still laughing.

Well, it's the genre, and GRRM is following it pretty well (and there are lots of hints in the text that he borrows from these classic gothic romances, I put Jane Eyre borrows after the Sansa/Sandor piece). In Rebecca, the heroine is haunted by the ghost of her husband's first wife. In Jane Eyre, ditto (only she's alive!) The challenges are often psychological, it's a pretty special kind of hero's journey. If you look at the top of this page, there are all of these story elements, too: The Rival (without rivals, there is no possibility for crisis) Moral Weight (if the lovers cannot elevate themselves morally, they will not be able to find authentic love; that is, they must have a worldview shift that raises their moral fiber) Helpers, Hinderers (those who help the two come together, those who work to destroy the match) Gender Divide (distinct differences in the ways the two lovers view love must be in play) External Need (external pressures to find a mate) Forces At Play Beyond the Couple's Control (social convention) Forces At Play in the Couple's Control (one or both lovers has to get out of their own way to change their behavior and worldview) Rituals (the lovers develop little things they only do with one another) Secrets Secrets society keeps from the couple Secrets the couple keeps from society Secrets the couple keeps from one another Secrets one of the couple keeps from himself/herself So let's look at Dany. He shows her meeting the challenges of what is at first a hostile world, that over time, she makes her own. It's through Drogo's gift of the silver that she comes into her own. I think he did a really nice job with riding as the means for self-discovery: Drogo giving her the silver, bonding with him via the silver (as he points out in the quote above), the meshing of the dragon dreams with the silver showing her the way, riding Drogo, and ultimately, riding her dragon, Drogon. And all the romantic elements are there: the rival (Jorah), the gender divide (Dany showing Drogo how she likes it - "this night I would look at your face"), the helpers (Irri, Jhiqui, Doreah), the hinderers (Viserys), forces at play both beyond and in the couple's control (the Dothraki lifestyle where there are things that are positive and things that are negative, and together, they find a way forward together), and so on. I think he's woven all of this together nicely. Like Tina Turner sang, he doesn't like stories that are nice and easy, he likes stories that are nice and rough. So it's easy to see why this sort of story appeals to him.

Along the same lines of the gothic romance discussion above... GRRM follows the gothic tradition in his romances, too. An easy one to see is the story of Sansa and the Hound, which closely follows Beauty and the Beast. Other romances are told in similar ways. For Sansa, the setting is a traditional castle. For Dany, the setting is the wild grassland of the Dothraki. In both cases, the women must learn to find their way in strange and often hostile new places. They are helped by dangerous men (as one character put it, "scars make a man look dangerous, and danger is exciting"). Their interactions with these men tap into the fear and excitement of sexual awakening. Sansa enjoys a "song" she wrote for herself, about a kiss she shared with Sandor. Dany rides Drogo like she rides her silver, and later, her dragon. The women draw on these experiences as they face new obstacles. Here, GRRM spells out the connection between fear and excitement: Dany remembers her first night with Drogo: She remembered the night of her first wedding, when Khal Drogo had claimed her maidenhead beneath the stranger stars. She remembered how frightened she had been, and how excited. GRRM describes the scene the same way: There are a couple of stories. As a wedding gift, Khal Drogo gives Daenerys a silver horse and she rides away. For a moment you think she’s fleeing. Then she turns the horse around and leaps the horse over a big campfire. Drogo is very impressed, and it starts the relationship on a good note... So they had to scrap that sequence, which was unfortunate, as it was a bonding moment between Dany and Khal Drogo. Then came the filming of the wedding night. In the Emilia Clarke version, it’s rape. It’s not rape in my book, and it’s not rape in the scene as we filmed it with Tamzin Merchant. It’s a seduction. Dany and Drogo don’t have the same language. Dany is a little scared but also a little excited, and Drogo is being more considerate. The only words he knows are “yes” or “no.” Originally it was a fairly faithful version.

While we are waiting for the rest of the story, here are more romance genre techniques authors like GRRM use (his fondness for "dangerous" love interests is standard gothic romance). There's a great discussion in the Blu-ray extras for the excellent Hitchcock adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, with feminist film critics Molly Haskell and Patricia White: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7163616/ Some highlights: Molly: I think Rebecca has held up remarkably well... Patricia: It resonates with concerns that anyone would have about "What's my role?"... Molly: It's also the foundational text of chick lit, which is Jane Eyre... and even before that, Pride and Prejudice... Patricia: It has that romance, but it also has the gothic, the woman in the haunted house... Molly: The embittered man... and he needs to be softened and humanized... and he falls in love... The fantasy that somebody will see in her what nobody else sees in her. Patricia: Which is classic romance lit... She's such a little girl, and he's so far away, distant, unreadable... Molly: Maybe she will emerge from this whole sort of Victorian penumbra and become a modern woman... Patricia: It's also true that when he declares himself, all the magic is gone... It stays in the past, never comes back to the present. Molly: Romance, love, passion has to have a mystery, a danger. Once it becomes domestic, it's gone.... It is a gothic romance which is about gothic romance... Patricia: We don't go inside Maxim at all. Molly: He is the brooding hero... Patricia: The young woman is having to be trained to disavow the power she has as a child... So she is threatening in a way. Molly. Because she can't be controlled.... He already fears that she will stop loving him. So you feel the male vulnerability, too... Patricia: Laurence Olivier is the Rochester who is actually sexy, too. Molly: He's so unpredictable... She never knows what to expect from him. Patricia: The kiss or kill... Then Cary Grant is in that role in Suspicion, which is even more sinister. Molly: The kiss can turn into the kill at any moment... The wanting to lose the self, the not wanting to lose the self... Patricia: The Harlequin is does he love me, what is going to happen, and then it turns out his disinterest was he loved you all along, whatever. In the gothic... the house is your prison, so it's very specific to isolation... And of course it's romanticized, too. Because if you had to be trapped in a house, Manderley would not be bad. Molly: It's having your cake and eating it, too... Patricia: The 40's are filled with movies that we might think of as male films, like film noir or like Citizen Kane, but are really touched by this gothic sensibility...