George R.R. Martin said talk about it. So let's talk about it. V.2

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

Martin said in an interview (paraphrasing here): "HBO gave me a boatload of money and I gave them the rights to the story. They can do what they want." He listed a few wild examples of how the show could deviate from the books and he acknowledged that the show had the right to make any changes they wanted.

I cannot for the life of me find that interview. It's on YouTube if anyone else cares to d find it. Maybe someone might remember it. Anyway: Martin seems to accept the show is different from the books and the show can make any changes to his works that they want.

Everything Martin says about it cannot be trusted, as the OP pointed out. What is he going to do, really? Start criticizing the show based on his own books? No, not ever. He is going to say they have done a great job basically no matter what.

[TheLeviathan73]

Also Aegon is fake, he didn't swap the baby, that would be a crazy twist if Aegon was actually the real son of Rhaegar.

I sure hope you're right.

I do agree with you about Crasters, that whole thing was a mess. I think Locke's reasoning was supposed to be about loyalty, but it didn't come across clearly for sure.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

Another example, what was the point of the letter from Lysa to Cat (blaming Lannisters for Jon Arryn's death) in the show? In the books, it convinces Cat that Ned has to go to KL, which is exactly what LF wants (recall the letter was actually his doing by Lysa's admission) and she succeeds in convincing Ned to go. In the show, she pleads for him to stay, which is odd, and Luwin essentially convinces him to go.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

Again my main point is that D&D have done a great job taking the game of thrones out of Game of Thrones.

[artihcus022]

I think you missed the part where Doran and Illyrio/Varys have been working against each other for decades. Varys in AGOT says "This is no longer a game for 2 players..." Doran/Oberyn was the other player.

Well if they are removing FAEGON/JONCON and the Golden Co. there is no reason for the Martells to be in the show anymore. They are explicitly linking up with Aegon VI via Arianne. The only way out is if the finale makes Trystane into Faegon and have Arianne be Myrcella, which is not entirely out of the left field but needless complicated.

Ideally they should make Doran Martell the Boss and Sponsor of Team VarysDany.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

I sure hope you're right.

I do agree with you about Crasters, that whole thing was a mess. I think Locke's reasoning was supposed to be about loyalty, but it didn't come across clearly for sure.

Nothing about loyalty, he just says he doesn't like rich motherfuckers and cuts off Jaime's hand, which is very odd coming from someone relatively well off, he is a fucking bannerman to the Boltons, not some poor peasant. Total nonsense.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

Well if they are removing FAEGON/JONCON and the Golden Co. there is no reason for the Martells to be in the show anymore. They are explicitly linking up with Aegon VI via Arianne. The only way out is if the finale makes Trystane into Faegon and have Arianne be Myrcella, which is not entirely out of the left field but needless complicated.

Ideally they should make Doran Martell the Boss and Sponsor of Team VarysDany.

Actually it would appear their plan is to make Trystane into Arianne. And yeah, they may be explicitly linking up with fAegon at the moment but that has never been the master plan. Doran and Oberyn have been plotting for like 20 years. They have spent a lot of time laying a lot of groundwork in the Free Cities and other places to conquer Westeros themselves and make Arianne Queen in her own right.

EDIT: And team Varys/Illyrio have been trying to do the same thing but with fAegon and the GC. If you look at the Free Cities and at the opposing factions in Volantis, that entire section of Essos is basically split 50/50 between team Martell and team Varys/Illyrio.

[sifth]

Nothing about loyalty, he just says he doesn't like rich motherfuckers and cuts off Jaime's hand, which is very odd coming from someone relatively well off, he is a fucking bannerman to the Boltons, not some poor peasant. Total nonsense.

He was also a bit insane. I mean this is the same guy who gave Jamie piss to drink and tried to feed a woman to a bear for shits and giggles.

[Dragon in the North]

1. Mance doesn't know the size of the watch even though he was a brother fairly recently.

He hasn't been a brother for twenty years.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

He hasn't been a brother for twenty years.

Yeah but he knows exactly how big the watch was when he left (he's not some wildling who has never seen the wall or is afraid of the crows), and he has kept tabs on them since. It's not like they are going to suddenly quadruple in size after Mance leaves. So when I say fairly recently, I mean in terms of how long it would take for the watch to drastically increase in number, which would be a super super super long time considering they have only been losing men over the years, and Mance knows this.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

He was also a bit insane. I mean this is the same guy who gave Jamie piss to drink and tried to feed a woman to a bear for shits and giggles.

Yeah but he only gave her to a bear after being severely disappointed by her ransom offer. And giving Jaime piss to drink was just funny.

[ADanceWithCats]

I would very much like to see an argument as to why AFFC and ADWD is...

1) Impossible to adapt to TV.

2) Still worse that what we have seen so far in Season 5.

You're cute. I'll bite.

Weak characters:

These books are bloated with meaningless characters (Quentyn) and extras (basically everybody in Brienne's, Jaime's, Cersei's and Dany's arcs). Some of the new characters are blatant plot devices (LSH exists mainly to bring Jaime and Brienne together; Quentyn, to release the dragons; Manderly to inform Davos of Rickon's survival). Other new characters are introduced and then given no chance for an interesting plotline (Aegon, Euron; I'd love to know what crossed Martin's mind that the best use for pirate-vikings was to provide a transportation service). Martin, finally, doesn't have the guts to retire old characters he has no use for (Mance, Bronn), leading to this weird effect of 'hangers-on' where these characters are given convoluted, nonsensical plotlines just to stay on page.

Weak plotting:

Did I mention convoluted plotlines? Because, oh god, the convoluted plotlines. In my favourite example, Euron exists in AFFC/ADWD essentially so that the Ironborn could attack the Shield Islands so that Loras could get angry and attack Dragonstone so that Margaery would not have a champion at her trial. Other examples: Jon sending Sam off from the Wall so that he could take Mance's son with him (in fact, the whole baby-swapping business). Mance being glamoured so that he could be sent to Winterfell to rescue an extra. Or possibly so that a letter could be written that would cause people with much better reasons to gripe to gripe.

Multiple characters are stuck in idle repetition (Brienne, Tyrion, Dany, Cersei, Jon). What is worse is that for a lot of these characters, there is the sensation that it's not the character who is stuck in that loop - it's the author who can't get over his block. It's especially evident in the case of Dany, where Martin even admitted it off-page. Finally, and possibly the most offensively, multiple characters are stuck in repetition in deeply introspective mode among strangers. The effect is that a lot of pages are devoted to characters thinking about recently-introduced extras we haven't yet had a chance to start caring for at all.

Overuse of fake cliffhangers (Arya went blind! oh, it's just training... Brienne is in danger!... oh, she isn't... now it's Jaime who is in danger!), character resurrections (Mance is dead! oh, he was glamoured... Cat is dead! oh, she got zombified... the Hound is dead! oh, he isn't... Now Jon is dead!). I'd add sex scenes used purely for shock (Cersei's sudden lesbian trips, Dany getting aroused by slaves dancing), but that's an area where the show is almost as bad to me.

Weak writing / editing:

Overuse of catchphrases ("words are wind", "nuncle", "maid of three-and-ten", "where do whores go", "much and more").

Several plotlines do not form complete arcs. There is no closure to them (Meereen/Stannis).

Tonal clash. It's the Hobbit-the-movie problem. Half of the Hobbit tries to be a serious prequel to Lord of the Rings, half of it is a campy videogame. Both Dorne and the expanded Iron Islands (Euron/Damphair/Victarion) are just much campier than the rest of AFFC/ADWD. Camp is nice, trying to be realistic is also nice, but when the two get together, yerch. That's made much worse by that a lot of the non-camp plotlines are deeply introspective/ruminating/introvertive. Bad as Dorne in the show is, to me, it's merely a weak reflection of how bad Dorne in the books is.

Second-order issues:

The immediate instinct upon seeing a list of issues is to, legalistically, try to disprove and provide counterexamples to each and every single one of them, thus, in one's mind, weakening the case. This neglects the very important aspect of synergy/emergence/nonlinearity/second-order issues: the primary faults compound each other, thus weakening the overall structure even further. Hence the frequently-used descriptor of AFFC/ADWD as "bloated".

Now, you can absolutely disagree with everything I wrote. But many people, including the showrunners, apparently agree with at least some of these points, which is why they made the changes they did.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

You're cute. I'll bite.

Weak characters:

These books are bloated with meaningless characters (Quentyn) and extras (basically everybody in Brienne's, Jaime's, Cersei's and Dany's arcs). Some of the new characters are blatant plot devices (LSH exists mainly to bring Jaime and Brienne together; Quentyn, to release the dragons; Manderly to inform Davos of Rickon's survival). Other new characters are introduced and then given no chance for an interesting plotline (Aegon, Euron; I'd love to know what crossed Martin's mind that the best use for pirate-vikings was to provide a transportation service). Martin, finally, doesn't have the guts to retire old characters he has no use for (Mance, Bronn), leading to this weird effect of 'hangers-on' where these characters are given convoluted, nonsensical plotlines just to stay on page.

Weak plotting:

Did I mention convoluted plotlines? Because, oh god, the convoluted plotlines. In my favourite example, Euron exists in AFFC/ADWD essentially so that the Ironborn could attack the Shield Islands so that Loras could get angry and attack Dragonstone so that Margaery would not have a champion at her trial. Other examples: Jon sending Sam off from the Wall so that he could take Mance's son with him (in fact, the whole baby-swapping business). Mance being glamoured so that he could be sent to Winterfell to rescue an extra. Or possibly so that a letter could be written that would cause people with much better reasons to gripe to gripe.

Multiple characters are stuck in idle repetition (Brienne, Tyrion, Dany, Cersei, Jon). What is worse is that for a lot of these characters, there is the sensation that it's not the character who is stuck in that loop - it's the author who can't get over his block. It's especially evident in the case of Dany, where Martin even admitted it off-page. Finally, and possibly the most offensively, multiple characters are stuck in repetition in deeply introspective mode among strangers. The effect is that a lot of pages are devoted to characters thinking about recently-introduced extras we haven't yet had a chance to start caring for at all.

Overuse of fake cliffhangers (Arya went blind! oh, it's just training... Brienne is in danger!... oh, she isn't... now it's Jaime who is in danger!), character resurrections (Mance is dead! oh, he was glamoured... Cat is dead! oh, she got zombified... the Hound is dead! oh, he isn't... Now Jon is dead!). I'd add sex scenes used purely for shock (Cersei's sudden lesbian trips, Dany getting aroused by slaves dancing), but that's an area where the show is almost as bad to me.

Weak writing / editing:

Overuse of catchphrases ("words are wind", "nuncle", "maid of three-and-ten", "where do whores go", "much and more").

Several plotlines do not form complete arcs. There is no closure to them (Meereen/Stannis).

Tonal clash. It's the Hobbit-the-movie problem. Half of the Hobbit tries to be a serious prequel to Lord of the Rings, half of it is a campy videogame. Both Dorne and the expanded Iron Islands (Euron/Damphair/Victarion) are just much campier than the rest of AFFC/ADWD. Camp is nice, trying to be realistic is also nice, but when the two get together, yerch. That's made much worse by that a lot of the non-camp plotlines are deeply introspective/ruminating/introvertive. Bad as Dorne in the show is, to me, it's merely a weak reflection of how bad Dorne in the books is.

Second-order issues:

The immediate instinct upon seeing a list of issues is to, legalistically, try to disprove and provide counterexamples to each and every single one of them, thus, in one's mind, weakening the case. This neglects the very important aspect of synergy/emergence/nonlinearity/second-order issues: the primary faults compound each other, thus weakening the overall structure even further. Hence the frequently-used descriptor of AFFC/ADWD as "bloated".

Now, you can absolutely disagree with everything I wrote. But many people, including the showrunners, apparently agree with at least some of these points, which is why they made the changes they did.

Even if I agreed with everything you said (which I don't, but I do consider all your points legit), that doesn't mean D&D have done a good job adapting the books. They waste time, they waste resources and budget (example: 600 hand-made unique faces for the hall of faces, WTF?!), they have a very low standard of what passes for acceptable logic to characters on the show, and they make some changes for no apparent reason at all.

Generally speaking I think books 4 and 5 will be much more interesting to read once book 6 is out and we actually know what people were up to and we can read between the lines with more insight. But I love them anyways!

[ADanceWithCats]

Even if I agreed with everything you said (which I don't, but I do consider all your points legit), that doesn't mean D&D have done a good job adapting the books. They waste time, they waste resources and budget (example: 600 hand-made unique faces for the hall of faces, WTF?!), they have a very low standard of what passes for acceptable logic to characters on the show, and they make some changes for no apparent reason at all.

That was not the question, though - please don't shift the goalposts. The question was why the books are unadaptable.

[Dragon in the North]

Even if I agreed with everything you said (which I don't, but I do consider all your points legit), that doesn't mean D&D have done a good job adapting the books. They waste time, they waste resources and budget (example: 600 hand-made unique faces for the hall of faces, WTF?!), they have a very low standard of what passes for acceptable logic to characters on the show, and they make some changes for no apparent reason at all.

Generally speaking I think books 4 and 5 will be much more interesting to read once book 6 is out and we actually know what people were up to and we can read between the lines with more insight. But I love them anyways!

I believe the show handled some plots better than the books but not all of them:

Wall/Stannis: show; Hardhome and Stannis/Shireen

North/Winterfell: books; the Northern lords and Theon's thoughts made this one of my favorite arcs in the books

King's Landing: show; this was a close one, but I didn't particularly like Cersei's quick descent into madness and Jonathan Pryce as the Hight Sparrow is a definite plus.

Dorne: books; somehow, Dorne is even worse in the show.

Tyrion/Dany/Meereen: show; Tyrion and Dany meeting was a vast improvement

Arya/Braavos: tie;

Brienne: show; her plot isn't as meandering as it is in the books and has more relevance

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

That was not the question, though - please don't shift the goalposts. The question was why the books are unadaptable.

Not trying to shift any goal posts, just saying you make good points for why the books are difficult to adapt, but they are not impossible, and D&D have done a shitty job even taking into account all your valid points.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

I believe the show handled some plots better than the books but not all of them:

Wall/Stannis: show; Hardhome and Stannis/Shireen

North/Winterfell: books; the Northern lords and Theon's thoughts made this one of my favorite arcs in the books

King's Landing: show; this was a close one, but I didn't particularly like Cersei's quick descent into madness and Jonathan Pryce as the Hight Sparrow is a definite plus.

Dorne: books; somehow, Dorne is even worse in the show.

Tyrion/Dany/Meereen: show; Tyrion and Dany meeting was a vast improvement

Arya/Braavos: tie;

Brienne: show; her plot isn't as meandering as it is in the books and has more relevance

Cersei is one of my biggest complaints on the show. You say she quickly descended into madness but that is incorrect, we simply don't have her point of view until book 4. Once we finally got inside her head it became clear she is insane. Recall that she did push her friend down a well when she was like 10.

[The King Of Cooked Steak]

Wow, someone needs to close this thread indefinitely. I don't get why you guys get so worked up over a TV series just because one doesn't like it. If you think he's "stubborn" or "stupid" with no good arguments, then leave, and let him make a fool of himself, if you think that way.

Anyway, OP makes some decent points. The show has mutilated the story a little bit too much, and D&D's intern writing keeps being exposed. Now, D&D can be good. They can actually be great at times. Even improve on the books. Proof of that was last Sunday's episode. Although, they need to re-evaluate their priorities when thinking of doing atrocious scenes such as Sansa's rape.

Despite that, the OP's idea that they should've adapted Feast and Dance in the same way as in the books, as two separate seasons split geographically is disastrous IMO. It barely worked when Martin did it in the book. Merging them together is actually one of the much better ideas that they've had. A season without fan favorites such as Tyrion, Dany and Jon is not going to bode well with viewers, honestly. It's like for example, taking the second season of Prison Break, where all of the inmates are spread across Panama, yet the writers split it into two seasons, and focused in the first on T-Bag, Abruzzi and Franklin, and then in the second we get to the fan favorites Scofield, Burrows and Sucre.

And also, your assessment that they cut other main characters such as Bran, or left absent fan favorites like Jaqen is pretty weak. You can't really compare imperative characters like Tyrion with others who are there to move the plot along like Jaqen, or Bran who's absense is because they ran out of material for him, and it wouldn't hurt the audience if they spared him because they haven't spent that much time with him anyway to really get attached.

There are some things you can do in the books, that you just can't in the show. Even if they wanted to do that, I doubt HBO would let them. Try presenting that idea to television executives and they would shit-can it immediately. So forcefully they have to either cut a lot of things or move something into the next season (e.g. Greyjoys).

[ADanceWithCats]

Not trying to shift any goal posts, just saying you make good points for why the books are difficult to adapt, but they are not impossible, and D&D have done a shitty job even taking into account all your valid points.

Well, let's look at what they did.

- They cut down on the number of characters, extras and plotlines, at times merging them (Jaime/Dorne, Sansa/Brienne/Winterfell), at times postponing them (Euron, Riverlands), at times cutting them entirely (Quentyn, Manderly, LSH, Aegon). They retired some of the old characters they knew they did not want to use (Mance, Barristan).

- They simplified or cut the convoluted plotlines, concentrating on their essence. In Jon's case, that's the Watch-vs.-Wildings conflict; in Dany's, it's Dany-vs.-the Harpy; in Cersei, it's Cersei-vs.-the-Tyrells.

- They toned down the "stuck in a loop" impression - Tyrion still has emotional problems, and they are evident from his alcoholism; Cersei also has emotional problems, and they are evident from her alcoholism. But the show acknowledges that it's not really suited to being a deep psychological study of depression and so the plot does move further. Most to the point, which is the change I like the most, they realised Dany's purpose of her stay in Meereen. She is learning how to negotiate. And she has been given a much better reason for both her stay in Meereen and her going to Westeros than anywhere in the books.

- No fake cliffhangers or resurrections so far. We'll see if this changes if Arya gets blind and/or if the Hound returns next season. (They did not tone down the sex scenes. That's strike one.)

- No repeated overuse of phrases.

- Cutting the Meereen battle means that Dany's arc has a climax (Daznak's). For Stannis, since they evidently decided to delay the conflict with the Boltons until next season, they constructed that Agamemnon/Iphigenia arc with Shireen.

- They failed to tone down the camp in Dorne (that's strike two). Victarion will probably play a far more minor role in the coming season (e: if he's even in it), so there's a chance he will be successfully toned down, but it would be unfair to give D&D points in advance, so I won't do that.

As you can see, out of my many gripes with the books, D&D actually managed to deal with a lot of them. Can you see now why I like this season?

[artihcus022]

As you can see, out of my many gripes with the books, D&D actually managed to deal with a lot of them. Can you see now why I like this season?

Well seeing as you clearly don't like the books, i can see why you would like this season.