How Much Did GRRM tell D&D?

[Neds Secret]

9 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Thanks GRRM for screwing with the tv series by letting them adapt your work before you'd even understood what you were doing with characters. No wonder those books are never getting made.

[Little Scribe of Naath]

Whatever GRRM told D&D, it is most likely that they are going for a very simplified version of the story, due to budget, time, child actors ages', and various other issues we have no idea about.

They have played up their main heroes and the most popular characters of the show -  Jon, Dany, Tyrion and Arya and removed almost all shades of grey from them. With the cutting of FAegon, there is no one to really oppose Dany in Westeros, so she will arrive next season and take it easily.

13/15 Episodes leaves just enough time for her to move North, ally with Jon Snow,Sansa and the rest and for all the heroes to have a showdown with the White Walkers. 

Book readers can rest easy as we have actually hardly been spoiled with anything major this season (apart from a few revelations in Bran's plot, I'd say.) The rest - such as Jon's resurrection, Boltons' defeat, Dany taking control of Dothraki,etc. were all practically known beforehand in any case.

The show and the books are truly different beasts now and at best, we can probably just expect a few hints as to where the books are going from the show.

[illinifan]

Really?  You think that they are removing the shades of gray from the characters.  The main hero screwed up his battle plan and got a majority of his troops killed because his emotions got the best of him.  Think that Aragorn would have done that in Lord of the Rings.

[Kusanagi]

18 minutes ago, illinifan said:

Really?  You think that they are removing the shades of gray from the characters.  The main hero screwed up his battle plan and got a majority of his troops killed because his emotions got the best of him.  Think that Aragorn would have done that in Lord of the Rings.

Removing shades of gray means the complete butchery of their characters and what's established in the universe I guess. Every character is either stupid or evil or both for no logical reason in the show now.

I wish they would just focus on showing us bewbs; I think that's the main storyline and the only characters that make sense.

[illinifan]

2 minutes ago, Kusanagi said:

Removing shades of gray means the complete butchery of their characters and what's established in the universe I guess. Every character is either stupid or evil or both for no logical reason in the show now.

I wish they would just focus on showing us bewbs; I think that's the main storyline and the only characters that make sense.

How is Jon screwing up the battle like he did a butchery of his character?  How about Sansa brutally murdering someone in the last episode?  That strikes me as gray.  Aragorn certainly wouldn't end up in that position and Jon is basically the Aragorn of Game of Thrones.  

[Kusanagi]

10 minutes ago, illinifan said:

How is Jon screwing up the battle like he did a butchery of his character?  How about Sansa brutally murdering someone in the last episode?  That strikes me as gray.  Aragorn certainly wouldn't end up in that position and Jon is basically the Aragorn of Game of Thrones.  

Because he is setup to be something bigger, be it Azor Ahai or something. Even if he isn't destined to be some sort of here, his character arc is about how he learns and becomes a competent leader with his time at the Wall, leading the Watch, and strengthen the defence against the White Walkers. It is just bad writing to have a character, esp. a main character, acting stupid and stay in one place forever.

[a black swan]

4 hours ago, Ser Biscuit said:

Found some great news about this topic. This was right before season 5 began to be written.

"BENIOFF: Last year we went out to Santa Fe for a week to sit down with him and just talk through where things are going, because we don’t know if we are going to catch up, and where exactly that would be. As you were saying before, if you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we sat just down with him and literally went through every character and said, “So what’s the destination for Daenerys? And Arya?”

INTERVIEWER: Did you feel like he knew? Or was he figuring it out?

WEISS: In some case he had very definite ideas, and in other cases he had left those story lines more open, for the time being."

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/03/game-of-thrones-benioff-weiss-interview

::Fist pump, thumps chest, points to God::

This tells me that he told them even less than I thought he did (which wasn't much to begin with). Thank you GRRM, you spared us from these hacks destroying even more of your ideas. Keep the fanfic going, show.

Seems like he told them how it ends for the main characters. He has had that with him for a while. Seems like those characters are trudging through their own story arcs while others are left vague and open to major interpretation aka d&d meddling.

[illinifan]

9 minutes ago, Kusanagi said:

Because he is setup to be something bigger, be it Azor Ahai or something. Even if he isn't destined to be some sort of here, his character arc is about how he learns and becomes a competent leader with his time at the Wall, leading the Watch, and strengthen the defence against the White Walkers. It is just bad writing to have a character, esp. a main character, acting stupid and stay in one place forever.

Yes.  His character arc is about learning to be a competent leader.  This was about Jon screwing up.

[Kusanagi]

Not saying he couldn't screw up, just not this kind of massive idiotic screw up. He could screw up in some other aspects to show he is within character, but not a battle with everybody's life at stake in such a facepalming way. This kind of drooling moron screw up completely goes against his character experience.

[Lockjaw of House Boltagon]

On 6/6/2016 at 5:16 PM, Ser Gareth said:

But if GRRM lives up to his questionable reputation then it wouldn't shock me at all if Littlefinger or the Hound forced themselves on her.

If Mercy and the Foresaken are any indication I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. Those chapters were so edgy I cut myself when reading them, and so grimdark I had to read them with a flashlight on. 

3 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Thanks GRRM for screwing with the tv series by letting them adapt your work before you'd even understood what you were doing with characters. No wonder those books are never getting made.

This. I would go a step further and say "thanks GRRM for agreeing to do the tv series when the books are nowhere near done" but the fact that as recently as two years ago he still was uncertain about the fate of some characters makes it so much worse. 

No wonder this season's been so bad. They're making up this stuff on the fly!

[Ser Biscuit]

What that article I posted tells me is that even for some of his main characters he didn't give them the specifics which is even better than I thought. Broad strokes for some main characters and few secondary characters, while nothing for the rest. This is great news for fans of ASOIAF and decreases the likelihood of more revealing tibits about the producer's meeting with GRRM on their Inside the Episodes segments. The less they know, the less they are likely to spoil in those segments out of spite.

And he shouldn't tell them one more word about where his story is going, not one word. It's HIS story first and foremost, and secondly why tell those bozos anything about your story when they are just going to either ignore it or fubar it on purpose?

What GRRM actually said in the meeting: Euron is my most charismatic King to date, gaining the allegiance of Iron Islands through intrigue of his adventures to Valyria and promises to rule Westeros with Danerys at his side. Binding magical weapons and sorcerers to his will, his rule of the Iron Islands could only hope be stopped by a returning Theon Greyjoy - the trueborn King of the Iron Islands which will nullify the results of Euron's Kingsmoot.

What Benioff actually hears: Euron is your run of the mill character and not essential to the plot. Make up a character called Yara, strip of her everything that defines Asha Greyjoy and have her be the key to everything. It's all about girl power, baby.

What Reiss actually hears: So we have Theon follow Yara around like a dog everywhere she goes, meekly watching as she steals his birthright while ignoring all rules of succession in the seven Kingdoms? BRILLIANT!!

Why should he waste his breath to people like this? Tell them nothing more, GRRM. You gave them a Picasso and all they had to do was trace over it. Instead they took crayons and scribbled over the canvas and then splashed raw sewage on it before presenting it back as a work of art.

They even defile the spirit of GRRM's work, twisting it to the complete opposite of what it and ASOIAF stands for and they do this purposely time and time and time again. ASOIAF is not about tits and dragons, dick jokes, wohoo girl power, revenge and more revenge, prostitutes doing splits, and the glorifying of rape and war and death. ASOIAF is a fantasy feudalistic world about the grey nature of mankind, about a time where those of noble blood saw their their authority challenged by the smallfolk they so inflicted with their petty feuds, about a time where magic and science clashed for supremacy, about a silver age of heroism where honor and loyalty defined us, about the pitfalls of prophecy and sorcery, about an age of romanticism where chivalry still existed, about a time and society where family meant everything, about how revenge never ends well for the avenger, about the price of life and victory and death, and most importantly it's about how pointless, horrible, and wrong war is. In short it's everything GoT is not.

So since they think so highly of themselves as writers that they can twist GRRM's story into the opposite of what he intended, which of course is to be expected from writers of such masterpieces as "X-Men Origins", surely they can come up with a great ending on their own that is on par or even surpasses GRRM. Not that they will since they don't possess 1/10000000000000000000000000000000th of GRRM's writing ability, creativity, vision, or literary talent.

[Lockjaw of House Boltagon]

1 hour ago, Ser Biscuit said:

And he shouldn't tell them one more word about where his story is going, not one word. It's HIS story first and foremost, and secondly why tell those bozos anything about your story when they are just going to either ignore it or fubar it on purpose?

Hmmm, because he's contractually obligated to do so, I assume? 

[RhaenysBee]

J.K. Rowling sold the right to adapt Harry Potter to the big screen when she was still in the middle of writing the story. She took part in the creative process of making the movie adaptations and finished the remaining books before the movie adaptations could have caught up with her. She had remained supportive of the adaptations and never once even subtly or passive aggressively criticized them. 

Just putting this out there. 

[zorkman]

26 minutes ago, RhaeBee said:

J.K. Rowling sold the right to adapt Harry Potter to the big screen when she was still in the middle of writing the story. She took part in the creative process of making the movie adaptations and finished the remaining books before the movie adaptations could have caught up with her. She had remained supportive of the adaptations and never once even subtly or passive aggressively criticized them. 

Just putting this out there. 

That is the key thing she finished the books before the film adaptions. In this case we will be lucky if we see the final book until 10 years after the series has ended.

[Ser Quork]

38 minutes ago, RhaeBee said:

J.K. Rowling sold the right to adapt Harry Potter to the big screen when she was still in the middle of writing the story. She took part in the creative process of making the movie adaptations and finished the remaining books before the movie adaptations could have caught up with her. She had remained supportive of the adaptations and never once even subtly or passive aggressively criticized them. 

Just putting this out there. 

She also maintained a high degree of editorial control that GRRM doesn't have, and that makes all the difference, I think.

[Zombies That Were Promised]

"Hold the Door" was the last / strongest moment of the season and of course... it was straight up GRRM's idea.  The 2nd half the season, even BoTB, feels like retreaded ground and poorly written with no subtlety.

D&D were able to write creative filler scenes early on, like 1x05 Robert and Cersei, but they are both exhausted and over the series since S4.  Their main goal really was "to get to the Red Wedding because it was so shocking."  It just feels like the passion for a faithful adaptation, especially faithful to the characters but also the plot, is completely gone.  D&D are drained and the creative spark gone.  They probably wanted to stop but HBO was throwing enough money at them.

 

oh it doesn't help how tight production is. very exhausting i imagine doing this the past 7 years.

[RhaenysBee]

14 minutes ago, zorkman said:

That is the key thing she finished the books before the film adaptions. In this case we will be lucky if we see the final book until 10 years after the series has ended.

My key message is that if you are going to let your story be adapted to the screen, it's the least that you finish the story you sold for adaptation and be exclusively supportive about it because it's just going to get you world fame and millions of dollars. If it's important to you that the adaptation remains faithful to your work, step 1, finish your work, step 2, keep an eye on the production of the adaptation. And if you fail at both those things, you have no business criticizing the people who adapt the story you didn't write. In general, do your job and be nice to those who do theirs. 

And for the credit, I do not believe that the books will ever be finished, the story will end the way the show ends it. 

[RhaenysBee]

4 minutes ago, Ser Quork said:

She also maintained a high degree of editorial control that GRRM doesn't have, and that makes all the difference, I think.

Why doesn't he? Rowling herself made that a condition when she sold Harry Potter and I doubt HBO would have denied Martin if he asked for the same. And having that kind of control makes a difference only on the faithfulness of the adaptation. It has no effect on how supportive you are of the screen version of your story and whether you write the source material or not. Just my opinion. 

[Ser Biscuit]

2 hours ago, Lyin' Ned said:

Hmmm, because he's contractually obligated to do so, I assume? 

Nope, he sold them the rights to use the names, likeness, and locations of characters, Westeros itself as well as other continents of Planetos, and to adapt the storylines already written. Under no circumstance is he obligated to give them the ending to his books.

1 hour ago, RhaeBee said:

J.K. Rowling sold the right to adapt Harry Potter to the big screen when she was still in the middle of writing the story. She took part in the creative process of making the movie adaptations and finished the remaining books before the movie adaptations could have caught up with her. She had remained supportive of the adaptations and never once even subtly or passive aggressively criticized them. 

Just putting this out there. 

J.K. Rowling also didn't have to worry about the movie director changing Hermione's name to "Jill", have Jill get raped, and then have Jill on a killing spree in Hogwarts because of the wrongs done to her; Voldemort being written as a misunderstood man who's girlfriend didn't appreciate him enough; and Harry being a ladies man obsessed with power and world domination; and the story itself being about how killing people with magic is fun and cool with no consequences. For if the movie director and the writers made those unnecessary, perverse, and idiotic changes she'd be PLENTY pissed off of what they'd done to her story and to her characters that she created with love. Lucky for her the movie director and those writers seemed to actually liked her books, wanted to do her characters justice, wanted to strongly and accurately portray the spirit behind them and didn't want to turn her story into something completely contrary to of what it was meant for.

GRRM has the opposite - two show runners who despise what his story is trying to say and only want to know what he has planned so that they can spit on it in their very "creative" ways.

[Prince of the North]

6 minutes ago, RhaeBee said:

My key message is that if you are going to let your story be adapted to the screen, it's the least that you finish the story you sold for adaptation and be exclusively supportive about it because it's just going to get you world fame and millions of dollars. If it's important to you that the adaptation remains faithful to your work, step 1, finish your work, step 2, keep an eye on the production of the adaptation. And if you fail at both those things, you have no business criticizing the people who adapt the story you didn't write. In general, do your job and be nice to those who do theirs. 

And for the credit, I do not believe that the books will ever be finished, the story will end the way the show ends it. 

So, are you saying you believe Martin has been criticizing GoT?  If so, I agree.  I do think he's been expressing his displeasure with it in a few ways over the years.  

But, as to the rest, I think you're making a couple of incorrect assumptions here.   For your "Step1: Finish Your Work" to make any difference the showrunners would have to be sticking more closely to the source material.  They haven't.  Not even when they had plenty of source material to work with.  For your "Step 2: Keep an Eye on the Production of the Adaptation" to make any difference you have to assume Martin could have secured more editorial control than he did.  And we simply don't know if he tried or not.  Maybe HBO doesn't like to give up control and they are pretty powerful in the industry, no?  Even back when Martin was still writing an episode each season I don't think the showrunners were writing around his episode so much as he had to make his episode work with theirs.  And I think, with the changes the showrunners kept making, it just became too difficult/frustrating for Martin to do this so he stepped away  

And I understand the desire to steel oneself for the possibility that Martin may never finish ASoIaF but, I'm an optimist, I believe he will