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On ‎5‎/‎8‎/‎2016 at 4:25 AM, ummester said:

I don't see how I am being disingenuous - I readily criticize the books and show. I think they both started going downhill after book 3, season 4 - because neither GRRM or D&D really know what point they are trying to make with this saga - they have each lost their way.

Re the wall, the more you think about it the more ridiculous it is in books and show.

A big wall of ice made to keep out ice mages - really? Oceans (made of water) on either side. Even if the ice mages are like the Dothraki and scared of salt water, there is enough fucking ice north of the wall to build a bridge or causeway around it. The wall makes no sense as a device to keep the Others out of the south - it could only logically have been erected to try and warn humans away from the north and even then there must be simpler fricken' ways.

But you are doing exactly what my post suggested people do - you are picking a side, you are saying the showrunners are doing a worse job with a story that seems to have lost it's way than the author who originally penned it. The show and books have flaws, heaps of them. Those flaws weren't apparent at the start because the writing (in books and show) was engaging enough to overlook them. GRRM and D&D are as good, or as bad, as each other.

Both GRRM and D&D are starting to remind me of Damen Lindelof of JJ Abrahack - they know how to start stories, they know how to throw interesting ideas out there - but they have no fucking idea how to finish them. Can anyone end stories properly any more? Last night I watch some show called Cloverfield St or something - it was ok, engaging and then the ending, WTF happened? Most things nowadays feel like that - the start is written by some type of author or storyteller and the end is written by a 5 year old, in crayon :D

Being willing to criticize both show and books does not mean you are unbiased. The only way to prove you are unbiased is to NEVER say that the reason the show is bad is because the books are bad. This isn't the same as saying that you think the show did something better than the books. This is never using the books as an excuse for anything the show does.

The reason you can't use the argument that the books make the show bad is that it is not considered an acceptable argument for adaptations, EVER. Let's say that someone makes a bad adaptation of the Mayor of Casterbridge. If someone tried to say that the reason the adaptation was bad because of the book, they would be considered mentally ill, stupid, or a troll. The reason for this is that not only was the book written over 100 years ago, but Thomas Hardy also died over 100 years ago. It is obvious that any problems with the adaptation would be with the current day people who chose to make the adaptation.

For some reason, people seem to think that this is different for AGOT because the book series is unfinished and/or because GRRM is still alive. They blame the problems with the show on the books or GRRM because they have decided that this is a conflict where they can take sides. This is not true. Any problems with the show belong solely to D&D.

I happen to think that ASOIAF series is one of the best things I have read in my reading life. I have been reading for over 50 years and am very widely read. There is a small, vocal minority that think there are major problems with AFFD/ADWD. I for the most part don't even bother to argue with them, because most of their criticisms are subjective. People like what they like; there is no way to change that with extended argument. This minority think there isn't enough good stuff in AFFC/ADWD for D&D to adapt. The majority of readers disagree. Unfortunately, D&D agree with those that don't think there is much in those two books. Thus the show they are now making, which has very little to do with the story in the books.

But even if the vocal minority and D&D are right and there is little in the books to adapt, the problems with the show still lie solely with D&D. They are the showrunners. It is their job to make a good TV show. Is it a good TV show? The answer to this is subjective. My rating for last season was a 6.02 average. I'm not amongst the worst critics of AGOT. However, I do get pissed when show apologists try to push the problems of the show onto the books.

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bent branch - that is bullshit. The books are the source, and any adaptation can't exist without the source.

And, nothing is perfect, including whatever the fuck Mayor of Casterbridge is.

If ASoIaF was such a literary masterpiece, it wouldn't be outsold (even with the popularity of the show) by 50 Shades of Grey. Just because you think it is one of the best things you have read in your life, does not mean the world does. Your opinion is just one in many.

The question isn't whose fault is it that after season 4/book 3 GoTs/ASoIaF went of the rails - the onus for that is clearly on the original author - GRRM designed the overall plot. THe question is only who do you think is fucking this saga up worse, the author or the showrunners?

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10 hours ago, ummester said:

bent branch - that is bullshit. The books are the source, and any adaptation can't exist without the source.

And, nothing is perfect, including whatever the fuck Mayor of Casterbridge is.

If ASoIaF was such a literary masterpiece, it wouldn't be outsold (even with the popularity of the show) by 50 Shades of Grey. Just because you think it is one of the best things you have read in your life, does not mean the world does. Your opinion is just one in many.

The question isn't whose fault is it that after season 4/book 3 GoTs/ASoIaF went of the rails - the onus for that is clearly on the original author - GRRM designed the overall plot. THe question is only who do you think is fucking this saga up worse, the author or the showrunners?

It is not bullshit. It would be bullshit if I said that D&D deserved no credit for how well they adapted the first seasons of the show. Hell, the novels were so great that they obviously couldn't get it wrong (this is sarcasm). Yet this is the argument that you are making in reverse. You are basically saying that D&D do not have the skill to write a show on their own without a strong story to follow. That you can't see that you are far more insulting to them than I am is rather funny.

The fact that you entirely missed the point about The Mayor of Casterbridge shows that you are not even trying to engage in any meaningful way. The Mayor of Casterbridge is an English language classic. It is the story of a man who gets drunk one night and sells his wife and infant daughter to another man. I probably should have gone with Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austen since practically everyone knows both of those, but the truth is GRRM reminds me of Thomas Hardy. They are both authors that tell incredible stories and have very distinctive writing styles. The last time I read Hardy was over 30 years ago. I decided to stop reading Hardy because in the last book I read there was a description of a bucolic meadow that felt like it lasted for five pages (and nothing even happened in that meadow). Hardy's writing style drove me crazy. There is no doubt that I could find some literary critics who agree with me about Hardy's writing style, but that doesn't mean I am right or that I am part of the majority opinion. If you ask me, there are lots of things in that book that could use fixing. HOWEVER, if I were to watch an adaptation of the novel (and it has been adapted) and if it were a bad adaptation, then I wouldn't blame a dead man for writing a novel over 100 years ago. The person or persons who decided to make the adaptation are 100% responsible for the adaptation. If there are problems with the source material and the adapters don't fix them (or indeed, make the problems worse), the adapters are 100% responsible. The original work is what it is. It is not judged by how easily or how well it is adapted. This should be a very basic concept, but D&D apologist are constantly blaming the novels and GRRM for the bad writing of D&D.

I am not judging AFFC/ADWD by how many copies they sell. I am judging how well received they are on Goodreads. Fifty Shades of Grey has a 3.68 rating with 22% of readers giving it a 1 or 2 rating. AFFC has a 4.07 rating with 5% of readers giving it a 1 or 2 rating. ADWD has a 4.29 rating with 3% of readers giving it a 1 or 2 rating. And you know what? After hundreds of thousands of ratings the ratings for AFFC/ADWD have gone up. This means that thousands of new ratings are all in the same direction, up! You and I can argue whether these two books are as good as the first three, but once someone new has read them, their opinion will out weigh either of ours, as they will make up their own mind.

So from my example of The Mayor of Casterbridge, it is clear that the ONLY people who can be held accountable for an adaptation is the adapters themselves. Thus D&D are the ones who get the credit for what they due right and the blame for what they do wrong. If you wish to go around claiming that D&D are responsible for the things that work on the show while blaming GRRM for the things that go wrong go right ahead, but you are still wrong.

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59 minutes ago, bent branch said:

It is not bullshit. It would be bullshit if I said that D&D deserved no credit for how well they adapted the first seasons of the show. Hell, the novels were so great that they obviously couldn't get it wrong (this is sarcasm). Yet this is the argument that you are making in reverse. You are basically saying that D&D do not have the skill to write a show on their own without a strong story to follow. That you can't see that you are far more insulting to them than I am is rather funny.

I mean to be insulting to both D&D and GRRM - they both started something good and are dropping the ball.

D&D probably don't have the same writing skill as GRRM - if they did they'd write original stories and not do adaptations.

59 minutes ago, bent branch said:

So from my example of The Mayor of Casterbridge, it is clear that the ONLY people who can be held accountable for an adaptation is the adapters themselves. Thus D&D are the ones who get the credit for what they due right and the blame for what they do wrong. If you wish to go around claiming that D&D are responsible for the things that work on the show while blaming GRRM for the things that go wrong go right ahead, but you are still wrong.

GRRM sold something that was incomplete and D&D were stupid enough to buy it - they are jointly responsible for starting something that is now blatantly obvious that neither had a solid plan for how to finish. Do you blame the drug dealer, the drug user, or both?

I don't care about word use, I don't even care that much about cinematography. Don't give a damn about the arty farty pretence. What I care about is story - an engaging and well organised narrative that moves at a consistent or quickening pace. ASoIaF/GoTs only had that at the start.

Besides all of this, GRRM used to be involved with the shows production, assisting with the story development and writing for it - so it was never fully a D&D adaptation anyway.

Also, the saga isn't finished - may never be, so, though you can claim GRRM is a good writer you can't claim he is a good storyteller (based on ASoIaF) because the story isn't finished. You cannot accurately judge a story without an end.

Edited by ummester
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