What the show got better than the books

[teej6]

On April 21, 2016 at 4:32 PM, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

im not saying Brienne needed more action at all, please tell me who said that? Stop making stuff up.

 

The problem with book Brienne is that her travels are basically irrelevant to the main plot, they are a distraction, a mini side plot that serves little purpose other than to let you spend time with her. It's a nice to have but a complete luxury in a series with limited time. 

Which is why it makes more sense for her actual purpose during the season to be about other plotlines and connecting stories. Instead of having her isolate herself pointlessly

Brienne's travels in the Riverlands are not irrelevant and they do serve a fundamental purpose to the overall story. Brienne's POV is Martin's way of showing the distruction and costs of war to the common folk. Now you may find that boring but referring to something as irrelevant to the plot because you don't find it interesting is simply another one of your weak arguments. 

[Wall Flower]

8 minutes ago, Good Guy Garlan said:

Isn't that what they tried to do, more or less? (With emphasis on "tried"). Yeah, Stannis and Company got short shrift but that's par for the course with these writers. 

The thing is, Sansa's storyline sums up my entire problem with the show/books. What D&D did, the whole Winterfell stuff, was an unmitigated disaster. It was terribly written, incredibly offensive, all around exhausting, etc, etc, and I'm not excusing the writers in any way, but I don't think they would've gone that way with Sansa's character if only Martin had bothered to write, I don't know, an actual storyline for her in Feast. Obviously, the Winterfell plot could've been done way, way better, but my point is that the last couple of books are borderline unadaptable. You can streamline, cut, enhance all you want, but in the end whatever you make out of crap will still be crappy. 

I'm not uncritical of the last two books, although I liked them a lot better than you. I think they could definitely have been more tightly edited to bring them to to a conclusion rather than a cliffhanger, for example. If anything, however, the show has made me appreciate Feast and Dance much more by comparison. I really enjoyed the first four seasons of the show even though I always thought there were things I liked much more in the books (such as Jon's season 2 arc versus the time he spent with the Halfhand in the books). I don't think I'm a ranter by nature but the things I've liked about the show have gotten progressively less as the seasons went on and the things I missed from the books have grown.

As this is a positive thread, though, there are a lot of great actors that have brought their characters to life and some like Maester Aemon, Maester Pycelle, Maester Lewin and Shireen that really stand out as being more vivid than their book portrayals. I really liked the way the battle for the Wall was portrayed (for the most part) because it really gave the feel of these nobodies fighting to preserve the realm while the noble backstabber's reigned in supreme ignorance in KL. Hardhome had some issues for me (mostly of continuity with the rest of the story) but it really did show the magnitude of the threat that the Others represent and how unprepared the people of Westeros are to deal with them.

 

[teej6]

24 minutes ago, Good Guy Garlan said:

Isn't that what they tried to do, more or less? (With emphasis on "tried"). Yeah, Stannis and Company got short shrift but that's par for the course with these writers. 

The thing is, Sansa's storyline sums up my entire problem with the show/books. What D&D did, the whole Winterfell stuff, was an unmitigated disaster. It was terribly written, incredibly offensive, all around exhausting, etc, etc, and I'm not excusing the writers in any way, but I don't think they would've gone that way with Sansa's character if only Martin had bothered to write, I don't know, an actual storyline for her in Feast. Obviously, the Winterfell plot could've been done way, way better, but my point is that the last couple of books are borderline unadaptable. You can streamline, cut, enhance all you want, but in the end whatever you make out of crap will still be crappy. 

Well Sansa may not have had an adaptable story from AFFC but at least they could have kept her in the Vale in some capacity instead of building her up at the end of S4 just to have her be Ramsay's sex slave in S5. And to make matters worse Sansa willingly agrees to marry into the family that killed her mum and brother. And for what? Revenge? They could have had Sansa plotting revenge with the Vale Lords or anything other than the nonesense they came up with.

[Good Guy Garlan]

16 minutes ago, teej6 said:

Brienne's travels in the Riverlands are not irrelevant and they do serve a fundamental purpose to the overall story. Brienne's POV is Martin's way of showing the distruction and costs of war to the common folk. Now you may find that boring but referring to something as irrelevant to the plot because you don't find it interesting is simply another one of your weak arguments. 

If I had a dollar every time I've seen this excuse I'd be rich enough to fund my own show based on the books. We actually see the cost of war to the smallfolk in books 2 and 3 through Arya's POV, which gives us a closer and much better perspective of this.

Most of Brienne's chapters are shameless filler Martin had to include when he realized he didn't have enough story in Feast to justify a separate book.

13 minutes ago, teej6 said:

Well Sansa may not have had an adaptable story from AFFC but at least they could have kept her in the Vale in some capacity instead of building her up at the end of S4 just to have her be Ramsay's sex slave in S5. And to make matters worse Sansa willingly agrees to marry into the family that killed her mum and brother. And for what? Revenge? They could have had Sansa plotting revenge with the Vale Lords or anything other than the nonesense they came up with.

Agreed, pretty much anything would've been better than what D&D gave us, but my point remains about the source material being insufficient and flawed. 

[JonisHenryTudor]

On 4/21/2016 at 1:41 PM, kissdbyfire said:

How can anyone argue with a straight face that Brienne's s 5 arc wasn't a zillion times more boring than anything in the books? LOL

I hated both does that count. For me, it is the difference from having a bank account of -1k or -1500k...either way you are pretty much f'ed. You can argue all you want that -1k is better than -1500k, but at the end of the day you are overdrawn regardless of preference . I prefer Brienne in the show because it was a lot less to stomach, not because it was actually better...just less. 

[teej6]

42 minutes ago, Good Guy Garlan said:

If I had a dollar every time I've seen this excuse I'd be rich enough to fund my own show based on the books. We actually see the cost of war to the smallfolk in books 2 and 3 through Arya's POV, which gives us a closer and much better perspective of this.

Most of Brienne's chapters are shameless filler Martin had to include when he realized he didn't have enough story in Feast to justify a separate book.

Agreed, pretty much anything would've been better than what D&D gave us, but my point remains about the source material being insufficient and flawed. 

I agree that GRRM does tend to meander and create a lot of sub plots. One could argue that's how all the ancient myths were written and GRRM is following that template in some form. Afer all, he did once write comics, which I think are a modern day version of myths. What I find annoying and absurd is when posters argue that things are irrelevant or fillers, pretending to know more about the story than the author himself. Finding it boring or something that is less interesting than the rest of the story is the reader's prerogative but relevance is determined by the storyteller. 

[JonisHenryTudor]

5 minutes ago, teej6 said:

I agree that GRRM does tend to meander and create a lot of sub plots. One could argue that's how all the ancient myths were written and GRRM is following that template in some form. Afer all, he did once write comics, which I think are a modern day version of myths. What I find annoying and absurd is when posters argue that things are irrelevant or fillers, pretending to know more about the story than the author himself. Finding it boring or something that is less interesting than the rest of the story is the reader's prerogative but relevance is determined by the storyteller. 

I could be wrong, but when I hear/read filler I immediately think of background noise. Take Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, for example. Huge chunks of each book is spent on lengthy descriptions of the  environment, clothing, food, etc. Sure it is all semi-interesting in terms of creating a world, but at the same time these things can function as a major distraction etc. I am sure Brienne's Don Quixote-like adventure through the Riverlands expresses a character development point among other things, but that doesn't mean that readers particularly care for it. 

Also for some readers, Brienne's narrative is both a distraction and unnecessary. I mean, do we really need Brienne to tell us that the commoners are suffering as well? Do we really need Brienne to show us how the Riverlands are in shambles? It isn't necessarily pointless, as for some readers it is simply unnecessary. It certainly has a point, but not one that necessarily needs to be made. We pretty much guessed the people and terrain were f'ed. 

[teej6]

5 minutes ago, JonisHenryTudor said:

I could be wrong, but when I hear/read filler I immediately think of background noise. Take Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, for example. Huge chunks of each book is spent on lengthy descriptions of the  environment, clothing, food, etc. Sure it is all semi-interesting in terms of creating a world, but at the same time these things can function as a major distraction etc. I am sure Brienne's Don Quixote-like adventure through the Riverlands expresses a character development point among other things, but that doesn't mean that readers particularly care for it. 

Also for some readers, Brienne's narrative is both a distraction and unnecessary. I mean, do we really need Brienne to tell us that the commoners are suffering as well? Do we really need Brienne to show us how the Riverlands are in shambles? It isn't necessarily pointless, as for some readers it is simply unnecessary. It certainly has a point, but not one that necessarily needs to be made. We pretty much guessed the people and terrain were f'ed. 

Again, you can say you as a reader don't care for a particular storyline or other but leave deciding relevance to the author. What you may find boring another reader might find interesting and vice versa. I myself find Brienne's storyline in AFFC less interesting than other characters' storylines but I wouldn't pressume to say or know whether it's relevant or not to the overall story, especially considering the fact that I've yet to read the entire story.  

[TheCasualObserver]

4 hours ago, teej6 said:

Again, you can say you as a reader don't care for a particular storyline or other but leave deciding relevance to the author. What you may find boring another reader might find interesting and vice versa. I myself find Brienne's storyline in AFFC less interesting than other characters' storylines but I wouldn't pressume to say or know whether it's relevant or not to the overall story, especially considering the fact that I've yet to read the entire story.  

I would argue that a lot of AFFC and ADWD feels stiff because there is a lot of characterization going on. Brienne's plotline is great for bettering our understanding of the character, but doesn't necessarily get the plot moving forward up until she  is captured - which could happen at anytime really. I don't blame people feeling let down by this though, because the earlier books never needed to make that payoff between progression of the plot and progression of the characters.

But since all Brienne did in season 5 was wait outside winterfell and kill stannis, I'm not convinced either plot or characterizatioon was achieved.

But since this is a positive board, I would say that I don't resent the loss of Damphair, and I loved the relationship between Robert and Cersei in season 1. 

[Meera of Tarth]

9 hours ago, Stag_legion said:

They could have ditched or streamlined some of the more boring storylines, while spending more time with the interesting/exciting storylines.  Stannis' northern campaign, the nights watch and northern politics could have easily been made 3 times as long as it was in S5 and still be exciting and engaging. Davos in white harbor alone could have been a major high point of the series, and it would have driven viewers crazy with excitement, finally the northern houses would have been something other than the empty phrase "The north remembers", that phrase would actually mean something.

Agree

[TheLeviathan73]

8 hours ago, Stag_legion said:

The siege would have only been a small part of it.

You're essentially advocating a snowy version of watching Ted Cruz rally delegates.  It's not going to enthrall people.

[Meera of Tarth]

4 hours ago, JonisHenryTudor said:

I could be wrong, but when I hear/read filler I immediately think of background noise. Take Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, for example. Huge chunks of each book is spent on lengthy descriptions of the  environment, clothing, food, etc. Sure it is all semi-interesting in terms of creating a world, but at the same time these things can function as a major distraction etc. I am sure Brienne's Don Quixote-like adventure through the Riverlands expresses a character development point among other things, but that doesn't mean that readers particularly care for it. 

Also for some readers, Brienne's narrative is both a distraction and unnecessary. I mean, do we really need Brienne to tell us that the commoners are suffering as well? Do we really need Brienne to show us how the Riverlands are in shambles? It isn't necessarily pointless, as for some readers it is simply unnecessary. It certainly has a point, but not one that necessarily needs to be made. We pretty much guessed the people and terrain were f'ed. 

Well, I think that would depend on the type of reader. For instance, I for one can't stand the Mereenese plot but still read it and don't think it's unnecessary.

 And Brienne's chapters are amazing for me, although I didn't get hooked on them until the third one.

[Neds Secret]

9 minutes ago, TheLeviathan73 said:

You're essentially advocating a snowy version of watching Ted Cruz rally delegates.  It's not going to enthrall people.

And watching ellaria and the idiotic sand snakes act like drunk schoolgirls talking trash is riveting!

[Meera of Tarth]

35 minutes ago, TheCasualObserver said:

I would argue that a lot of AFFC and ADWD feels stiff because there is a lot of characterization going on. Brienne's plotline is great for bettering our understanding of the character, but doesn't necessarily get the plot moving forward up until she  is captured - which could happen at anytime really. I don't blame people feeling let down by this though, because the earlier books never needed to make that payoff between progression of the plot and progression of the characters.

But since all Brienne did in season 5 was wait outside winterfell and kill stannis, I'm not convinced either plot or characterizatioon was achieved.

But since this is a positive board, I would say that I don't resent the loss of Damphair, and I loved the relationship between Robert and Cersei in season 1. 

Exactly, maybe waiting for a candle that served no purpose at all for the story can be described as innecessary, and not her POV's, isn't it?

Now, I'll say something I liked from S5 season (): I liked how they adapted Aemon's storyline and his death was respectful to the character. I missed his famous line from the books, but still was better than putting the body inside a barrel (although in the books it has its justification)

[HexMachina]

3 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

Exactly, maybe waiting for a candle that served no purpose at all for the story can be described as innecessary, and not her POV's, isn't it?

Now, I'll say something I liked from S5 season (): I liked how they adapted Aemon's storyline and his death was respectful to the character. I missed his famous line from the books, but still was better than putting the body inside a barrel (although in the books it has its justification)

I think "I dreamed I was old" was in the show, from what I remember