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SPOILERS: Rant and Rave


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2 minutes ago, Nightwish said:

As I said the first 4 seasons at least for me were far more decent since there was a base material they could use. But you can put the blame on Ds and their writing team. Since it’s them doing GOT, apparently they need the base material. In fact the worst they are as writers, the more they need it. 

No doubt, the first 4 were much better than from 5 on. And I absolutely put the blame on the Ds and their lack of talent as writers, and their lack of humility to acknowledge it. 

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2 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I think we will have to agree to disagree.  I hate book Euron, and don't think Vic adds anything to the mix, so Euron has the navy instead of Vic, big deal.  Damphair is filler in the books, sure, he's interesting, but he's filler, and he doesn't need to be in the show, and yes, I know he had a cameo, LOL.  More screen time for Balon Greyjoy would have been a better choice than adding in the secondary filler Greyjoys.

  • Victarion is with a red priest more competent than Melisandre and he is in the same area as Barristan, Tyrion and Grey Worm. Daenerys will be back shortly which will make that lovely quintet into a Essos-conquering sextet.
  • The Greyjoy kids (Theon and Asha/Yara) are in the North bouncing back and forth between Stannis Baratheon, Mance Rayder and Roose Bolton. Melisandre is not far at all, Davos is off running an errand for Stannis and Bran is closer than what we all would think.
  • Euron is in the same area as Samwell Tarly, Gilly and her baby, the Hightower family, Jaqen H'ghar, Aeron Greyjoy, all the Archmaesters and probably one of the Sand Snakes. The Tyrells -- the more powerful members of the family are far away in King's Landing -- are not only beginning to show signs of overextending themselves but they are also showing signs of collapsing under their own weight. And a big part of the reason why is because of Euron.

These are not minor, throwaway developments

Fine we'll agree to disagree on the Ironborn. When Winds (or more Winds sample chapters) comes out, you will see.

2 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

If Arianne and Aegon are going to eventually fail, then they don't really belong in the show unless the earlier seasons included them from the beginning, throwing in a huge secondary plot in the 5th season would have been terrible.  Just because the show had done a terrible job with Cersei w/out Aegon, doesn't mean there weren't other choices, like keeping the Tyrells alive for another season.  But, I adamantly don't think the show needed to add the author's filler.

I thought the show should have done something very similar with the FM as what they did with Arya and Tywin in season 2, she should have had her meetings and trainings with the kindly man, instead of the dumb waif, this kind of a set up could have given more background on Essos, the FM.  For my money, they wasted Tom and Maise's rapport when they brought him back and did nothing w/him.

I'm not sure how much detail George gave them on the path forward, given how bad the show has been since it left the books, that suggests to me, not enough detail.

Now who on Earth said that Arianne and Aegon are eventually going to fail? Where did you get that idea from?

Their two factions (especially the Dornishmen) are sitting pretty right now. If anything, they are poised to survive long enough to take control of everything or be on the winning side simply because they took their sweet time. Not to mention Dorne is pretty damn far away from the Wall, has plenty of food and has several natural defenses that work against the Others.

Eddard and Robb were destined to fail. Did that make their individual stories or their greater role in the story pointless?

As for the Tyrells? Hah. They had their chance. The only Tyrells to make it into the show were Loras, Mace, Olenna and Margaery. Even if you ignore Margaery's extended family in favor of her immediate family, she still has her lady mother Alerie (who is a Hightower by the way, hint hint) and two more brothers, Willas and Garlan. That's three more people they could have thrown in there to make life for Cersei and/or her family difficult after Margaery, Mace and Loras were blown to bits.

Even if you exclude Arianne and Quentyn Martell, Dorne still should have put up more of a fight against Cersei. There are still thousands of Dornish soldiers ready to go. Ellaria's capture and the death of the Sand Snakes should have made them more wrathful and belligerent. Plus, D&D made their season 5 Dornish f*ck0p worse in season 6 by killing Prince Doran and Trystane in the same episode. Hell, they didn't even have to kill Myrcella when they did. They could have postponed Myrcella's death until after Tommen. That way the Dornish have a true dilemma on their hands:

  • support their Martell king and his "Baratheon" wife who rules the Seven Kingdoms (the Dornish are egalitarian feminists remember)
  • find a way to keep Trystane on the throne while getting rid of Myrcella and her mother
  • abandon the both of them for Daenerys
  • continue to stay out of the game of thrones up until the White Walkers' invasion begins

I came up with that in five minutes.

GRRM didn't have to give them that much detail. The story would have self-propelled itself on cruise control for a bit had D&D been smart enough to not cut out most of the material from A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. It could have coasted long enough for them to concoct their own endgame.

They made two seasons out of A Storm of Swords and a lot of the fantastic stuff that happened in those two seasons (both of which were good) consisted of material exclusive to the TV show. No reason why they couldn't make two seasons out of Feast and Dance

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6 minutes ago, Jabar of House Titan said:
  • snipped..

Now who on Earth said that Arianne and Aegon are eventually going to fail? Where did you get that idea from?

They will ultimately fail because they're not in the show.  So, neither of them will be sitting the IT or alive at the end.  If they were end game the show would have cast them.

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2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Guys, there was nothing any good in that show that came from these two hacks. All the dialogues, scenery, and setup that was good and convincing came from George. You can be completely incompetent but if you are framed by such good material then you cannot ruin much when you make minor changes or condense something.

However, even in the good scenes back in season 1 the quality of their writing never stood out.

But if you leave hacks basically just with notes and outlines and expect them to come up with good dialogues, scenery, characters, and plots all by themselves you get what we got in this show.

This is never more evident than, say, in the completely nonsensical Qarth plot in season 2 which is most definitely just as bad as everything we get now. Not to mention this entire Talisa travesty.

The pity about all that is that this is obviously material that could have become a true and lasting landmark of in fantasy television. As it stands now we can be more than certain that the re-watch potential of that nonsense drops to about zero in the next decade or so. The only think that keeps people interested in the thing is to find out how it is going to end. But that's not going to last.

I'm as big of a "Pro-Books" guy as the rest of them but I have to disagree with the bold parts.

I thought the Qarth plot in season 2 was a really nice, unexpected change even if the singular most important part of it (the House of the Undying!!!) was rushed. The episode where Daenerys enters the House of the Undying should have been akin to the climaxes of The Shining or Silent Hill. Well, on second thought, this probably is the beginning of the end. I still liked the scene where she turns the tables on Doreah and Xaro Xhoan Daxos.

Oh and the "Where are my dragons?!" scene is iconic.

And what travesty? I enjoyed Talisa. Right off the top of my head, I can think of a couple really cool and interesting subplots and plot twists based on the fact that Talisa hails from a family of slavers in Volantis. And you still could have made a seamless connection between Talisa and House Westerling.

I liked many of the additions and remixes D&D made in the first four seasons: Talisa and Qarth being one of them. I also really liked many parts of season 5 and 6. Even though the cracks were still showing in season 6, season 5 is the worst of the two. All that said there were some really amazing, GRRM-level moments in the fifth and sixth seasons.

Imagine my disappointment when I learn that most of those amazing, jawdropping blockbuster moments (i.e. Sept of Baelor massacre, Hodor, Shireen, Dany in Vaes Dothrak, Battle of the Bastards, Hardhome, R+L=J) were just nuggets and soundbites of major GRRM plot points that D&D threw in.

 

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8 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I agree.  While the showrunners are definitely a living embodiment of falling up, they show was good when they had the books to use as a guide, yes, they still did some dumb things, but overall, they stuck to Martin's main story, his characters...if he had finished Winds in 2014 and gotten Spring out in 2017 or 2018...I think the show would have maintained itself at a much higher level.  They are either too busy or too arrogant to spend the time that is needed on the scripts.  Even this year, where they had almost two years, the writing is slightly improved, but not by much.  I thought ep. 1 and ep. 2 especially, were decent.  But, compare the 'eve of battle' Blackwater episode, where everyone is doing much the same thing...but we see all kinds of character revealing moments.  This time, we got a lot of cliches, and some good moments, but nothing compared to Blackwater.

They had a lot of good material in AFfC and ADwD. There was no need to rush through all that in season 5 with a lot of nonsensical material. They could have still cut plot lines they did not want to use but actually stayed close to the material for the stuff they were actually adapting. I only have dim memories of the High Sparrow nonsense, but man were those speeches bad. Not to mention all the Jon action hero shit.

And one can definitely say that there would have been no problem to properly adapt the missing two battles - the climaxes of ADwD that have been pushed to TWoW - because they were in part already written when ADwD came out and should be finished for quite some time right now. If they had wanted to do that properly they could have done so.

And especially to prevent to be in as shitty a position as they are now - a complete lack of proper source material to adapt - they certainly could have chosen at least two season, perhaps more for AFfC and ADwD. They dragged ASoS over two seasons, too.

And in general:

It is actually pretty stupid to brand material that's introduced later in a book series as 'filler' if it is the material that's leading up to the grand finale. With hindsight in mind Ned and Robert, Robb and Tywin, Ramsay and Roose and Walder are going to be the filler material because those plots and characters didn't carry the story to its eventual climax. The characters introduced in AFfC and ADwD are likely the main characters for the remainder of the series - in addition to the established heroes - but it seems quite clear that Aegon and Euron and Arianne, etc. are all going to be more relevant to the actual political plot of the series than, say, Arya ever will be.

13 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

They will ultimately fail because they're not in the show.  So, neither of them will be sitting the IT or alive at the end.  If they were end game the show would have cast them.

Sitting the Iron Throne in the end is not the criteria for 'being important' in this story, is it? Aegon can fail in his political game and still play a very important role.

But I really don't see what exactly allowed you to draw the conclusion that every 'important character who is alive in the end' has to be cast for the show? They make up things as they go along, and considering that this got worse as the series progressed there is no reason to believe that their writing or casting choices are based on creating a 'faithful ending'.

The rational way to look at those things is to conclude that they do what they want and then claim that this fits with the books (who is going to contradict them right now?) or they don't explain their decisions at all.

I mean, have you listened to their interviews and commentaries and stuff? They make creative decisions on a whim to pander various actors. That's how they make decisions. How does this fit with the idea that they want to make a faithful adaptation with the end fitting the ending of the books?

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36 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

They will ultimately fail because they're not in the show.  So, neither of them will be sitting the IT or alive at the end.  If they were end game the show would have cast them.

Robb Stark was never endgame. Why did they ever bother casting him?

Margaery Tyrell was never endgame. Why did they ever bother casting her?

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Just now, Jabar of House Titan said:

Robb Stark was never endgame. Why did they bother casting him?

The Starks are all important, since the story is the story of the Starks and the Lannisters and the Targaryens, more or less, with the ice/fire overlay.  We never needed, and would have been much, much better off if there was no Dorne plot in the books, no dumb cartoonish sand snakes, no Arianne or Quentyn POVs, none of it.  Same for Vic, we do not need his POV, at all.  Presumably, whatever Euron does is important enough that he's in the show, but he still is a terrible character, another very cartoonish character that isn't close to the richness and depth of the original main characters we saw in the first 3 books.  

The author's story is out of control and will probably never be finished.  It would have been preferable if he admitted this to himself and worked more closely with the show at least on this final season,  so the only end of ASOIAF that his readers are getting wasn't the dumb down stupid as fuck show version.

 

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1 minute ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

I'm as big of a "Pro-Books" guy as the rest of them but I have to disagree with the bold parts.

I thought the Qarth plot in season 2 was a really nice, unexpected change even if the singular most important part of it (the House of the Undying!!!) was rushed. The episode where Daenerys enters the House of the Undying should have been akin to the climaxes of The Shining or Silent Hill. Well, on second thought, this probably is the beginning of the end. I still liked the scene where she turns the tables on Doreah and Xaro Xhoan Daxos.

Apparently you like completely unmotivated and shocking betrayals? Seriously, the entire Qarth thing is just a series of empty ramblings about politics and redundant about Xaro the self-made man.

I could barely listen to this when I tried to re-watch the thing years ago. 

1 minute ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

And what travesty? I enjoyed Talisa. Right off the top of my head, I can think of a couple really cool and interesting subplots and plot twists based on the fact that Talisa hails from a family of slavers in Volantis. And you still could have made a seamless connection between Talisa and House Westerling.

Oh, here I meant to bad dialogue, too, in combination with the completely absurd plot of Robb slowly falling in love with a landless nobody working as a doctor. It is not the romance as such - the thing could have worked had it been better written, in fact it could have worked with Jeyne Westerling had they just tweaked that character and the setup some more.

The Volantis thing was just nonsense and grew completely out of the fact that they just read ADwD when they were writing the scripts. That's why we here Lady Dustin mentioned in that season, too (without her never showing up later, of course).

1 minute ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

I liked many of the additions and remixes D&D made in the first four seasons: Talisa and Qarth being one of them. I also really liked many parts of season 5 and 6. Even though the cracks were still showing in season 6, season 5 is the worst of the two. All that said there were some really amazing, GRRM-level moments in the fifth and sixth seasons.

Imagine my disappointment when I learn that most of those amazing, jawdropping blockbuster moments (i.e. Sept of Baelor massacre, Hodor, Shireen, Dany in Vaes Dothrak, Battle of the Bastards, Hardhome, R+L=J) were just nuggets and soundbites of major GRRM plot points that D&D threw in.

You are kidding me with the Baelor nonsense, right? That's completely unbelievable and a cheap cop-out to 'resolve' a plot line that's apparently going nowhere.

1 minute ago, Cas Stark said:

The Starks are all important, since the story is the story of the Starks and the Lannisters and the Targaryens, more or less, with the ice/fire overlay.  We never needed, and would have been much, much better off if there was no Dorne plot in the books, no dumb cartoonish sand snakes, no Arianne or Quentyn POVs, none of it.  Same for Vic, we do not need his POV, at all.  Presumably, whatever Euron does is important enough that he's in the show, but he still is a terrible character, another very cartoonish character that isn't close to the richness and depth of the original main characters we saw in the first 3 books.  

The author's story is out of control and will probably never be finished.  It would have been preferable if he admitted this to himself and worked more closely with the show at least on this final season,  so the only end of ASOIAF that his readers are getting wasn't the dumb down stupid as fuck show version.

Robb Stark was never a main character. He could have been cut from the show entirely. As could most of the secondary characters from the first couple of seasons. If I were adapting the entire book series and had limited resources one could even cut most of AGoT. Just merge Jon Arryn and Ned and start the story with the pointless civil war as a warm-up rather than waste time introducing characters who won't carry the overall story.

Most of the original characters, especially the Starks, are still children. They are never going to carry the bulk of the story. One even sees that in the show. They have no idea what to do with Bran, Arya, and Sansa, despite the factor that they are all not children in the show.

Oh, Harry Strickland is in the show now, too. Does that mean he is important, too?

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Okay @Cas Stark

Let's just say that you are right in saying that everything related to Dorne, every Greyjoy except for Theon, the Faceless Men, the Archmaesters of the Citadel, the Iron Bank, the smallfolk, fAegon/JonCon, Lady Stoneheart, R'hllor and the red priests, the magical prophecies, the Sealord, etc. are not important.

Let's say that that you are right to say that only two things matters: 1) the White Walkers and 2) the wars between the Targaryens, the Starks, the Lannisters and the Baratheons.

Make all of that make sense (on two giant ass continents, mind you) without including any of those things.

But before you do that....would you care to explain how can the Targaryen/Stark/Baratheon/Lannister conflict be one of the two most important things in the entire series if Stannis Baratheon -- the last Baratheon and the only Baratheon that has ever really mattered -- implodes and dies offscreen?

We'll wait.

 

ETA:

Oops you don't seem to think the Baratheons matter after all. Okay. Fine.

White Walkers and the conflicts between the Targaryens, Starks and Lannisters that spans across two large, different continents.

Make it a good story that makes sense.

Go.

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5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

A pointless civil war?

Sure. The entire War of the Five Kings was just pointless filler. People were killing each other for no good reasons when they should actually have prepared for the Others.

A properly shortened adaptation should certainly include a variation of the Red Wedding for shock value and all. But there is no need to build up so many characters who then just die. Tywin, Ned, Cat, Robb, Lysa, Mormont, Aemon, Robert, Viserys, etc. could all be merged or, in part, even cut.

The important part of a story is not really the first act, especially when it slows down the story by wasting time with characters like Renly and Balon, etc.

The real story is just beginning right now. It is true that we might not get it completely, but it makes no sense to insist the stuff we have is the true story or reflect what the later parts of the actual story is going to be about.

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3 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

snip

Personally, I think it's important part of the story, or at least an interesting part of the story.

I think the real problem here is when D&D started adding their own stuff. To me, that was pointless filler.

Their defenders will say there wasn't enough time to do everything. And while there is likely some truth to that, then why dear god must I endure 20 minutes of Euron and Cersei.

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14 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Sure. The entire War of the Five Kings was just pointless filler. People were killing each other for no good reasons when they should actually have prepared for the Others.

A properly shortened adaptation should certainly include a variation of the Red Wedding for shock value and all. But there is no need to build up so many characters who then just die. Tywin, Ned, Cat, Robb, Lysa, Mormont, Aemon, Robert, Viserys, etc. could all be merged or, in part, even cut.

The important part of a story is not really the first act, especially when it slows down the story by wasting time with characters like Renly and Balon, etc.

The real story is just beginning right now. It is true that we might not get it completely, but it makes no sense to insist the stuff we have is the true story or reflect what the later parts of the actual story is going to be about.

The War of the Five Kings has impacted every character on the show. It was the background stuff that characters talk about when we meet them in a 2 hour movie. Starks siblings lost their mother, brothers, father and uncles. In a movie it would be talked about we actually got to see it mold them instead of hear about it. Brienne lost her king we got to see it. And so on. When Gendry talks about the red woman and what she did to him. We saw it no flashback needed. 

That stuff is needed. 

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8 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Personally, I think it's important part of the story, or at least an interesting part of the story.

I think the real problem here is when D&D started adding their own stuff. To me, that was pointless filler.

It is the only story we have up to this point. And that makes it certainly very important. But this series is unfinished. If we pretend the guys adapting actually know or care about the full story and try to adapt that then their adaptation choices should (and would, if they were actually thinking this through) reflect the fact that they know what's important overall.

A lot of the stuff in the first three books just doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't serve the main story of the actual main characters - which are basically the Stark children with POVs, Tyrion, Jon, and Dany.

But their enemies and antagonists aren't Tywin, Renly, Balon, etc., they have to deal with other people.

I mean, most chapters of the main characters in the first couple of the books could be cut - like Bran doing nothing the entire day, or Arya getting nowhere in the Riverlands. This literally led nowhere. Bran, Arya, and Sansa's own stories more or less only began in AFfC and ADwD. Prior to that they were just windows into other stories - Robb's, events at court, events in the Riverlands, etc. They had no goals or intentions of their own aside from 'wanting to get back home', 'wanting their parents back', and 'wanting to get back to their parents'.

The story told in the first books are the stories of other people - most of which are dead now. So what was the worth of those stories to those main characters?

2 minutes ago, King Jon Snow Stark said:

The War of the Five Kings has impacted every character on the show. It was the background stuff that characters talk about when we might them in a 2 hour movie. Starks siblings lost their mother, brothers, fathers and uncles. In a movie it would be talked about we actually got see it mold them instead of her about it. Brienne lost her king we got to see it. And so on. When Gendry talks about the red woman and what she did to him. We saw no flashback needed. 

That stuff is needed. 

Sure, there is stuff there that would be needed. But a lot of it could be cut, especially revolving around the characters who are going to die long before the finale even approaches.

But my point actually is that insisting that new characters that are introduced later are filler rather than those characters who died earlier and were never main characters to begin with is pretty odd.

There are some stories that stretch throughout the entire series - Dany's and Jon's, for instance. But others were rather short. If you have limited time you should focus on introducing characters that last until the ending rather than wasting time with characters you know you will kill. Character growth and the like can be accomplished in other ways, too.

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8 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Apparently you like completely unmotivated and shocking betrayals? Seriously, the entire Qarth thing is just a series of empty ramblings about politics and redundant about Xaro the self-made man.

I could barely listen to this when I tried to re-watch the thing years ago. 

Oh, here I meant to bad dialogue, too, in combination with the completely absurd plot of Robb slowly falling in love with a landless nobody working as a doctor. It is not the romance as such - the thing could have worked had it been better written, in fact it could have worked with Jeyne Westerling had they just tweaked that character and the setup some more.

The Volantis thing was just nonsense and grew completely out of the fact that they just read ADwD when they were writing the scripts. That's why we here Lady Dustin mentioned in that season, too (without her never showing up later, of course).

You are kidding me with the Baelor nonsense, right? That's completely unbelievable and a cheap cop-out to 'resolve' a plot line that's apparently going nowhere.

Xaro's betrayal wasn't completely unmotivated. It was stupid and greedy on his part. But he wanted what he wanted and he wanted power. I got what the story was trying to do. Xaro basically is a microcosm of a character for the game of thrones being played by people like Cersei and Littlefinger -- people who have the appearance of finery and beauty (like Xaro's vault), who are as power-hungry and manipulative as Xaro and yet are as vacant, pathetic and needy on the inside...just like Xaro's vaults. Daenerys got a nice little warm-up in the game of thrones. I felt like that it prepared her well for what came in season 3.

I agree.

Jeyne Westerling (or Any Westerosi Female with a Good Name) would have been a better choice than Talisa. But I still believe you could have done some interesting things with Talisa's Volantene heritage later on.

  • What if Talisa's rich Volantene parents found out that their only daughter and unborn grandchild died horrifically as casualties of (from an outsider's perspective) senseless war in Westeros? They now they have a bone to pick with the Lannisters, the Freys and the Boltons. But they are slavers and have a very different culture from the Westerosi. So they have to debate whether or not to make common cause with Daenerys, be persuaded into joining Aegon or (more unlikely) seek vengeance on their own. What should happen if they were ever to meet Tyrion Lannister who also spent some time in Volantis.
  • What if her brothers came to Westeros to claim a dowry or some kind of inheritance only to find that their beloved sister wed a foolhardy warrior who never had a dowry? What if her brothers came around the same time as the Battle of the Bastards? What if they had men, food and riches? What if their demands put Sansa and Jon in a bit of bind. What if they somehow had seized Rickon in a chance to be taken seriously?

As far as the Baelor nonsense is concerned? Hey man, it made for good TV. And the idea and execution was ingenious. The Mad King was planning on doing the exact same thing. Book!Jaime repeatedly fears that Cersei will do the same thing. Daenerys dreams of setting King's Landing on fire.

It wasn't completely unbelievable. Granted, 99% of House Tyrell is not going to be in King's Landing in the exact same place at the exact same time. So, while Cersei might manage to kill Mace and Margaery, there are plenty of other Tyrells or people who love or are loyal to the Tyrells around who can give her hell. Also there is always someone to take the place of a person like the High Sparrow.

Before season 7, I always thought as Cersei's actions in the season 6 finale as classic Cersei. Classic Cersei being someone who thinks she is so clever that she half-bakes a ham-fisted solution for one of her short-term problems (most of which are self-inflicted) only to be blindsided and massively fucked over by both the long-term problems she failed to account for AND long-term consequences of her actions.

I never for once considered that all of Cersei's problems would be solved by the Baelor massacre that she would spend the next season and the first third of the season after that doing nothing.

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It all would have been avoided if GRRM kept his word and finished his books ahead of the show.  That is the proverbial bottom line.  The showrunners are not talented enough to do it without his books, then there wouldn't be any more guessing, or crackpot theories.  It would have unfolded as it was supposed to, instead of the author, 8 years and counting with no book out and the show a random mishmash of fanfic, GRRM bullet points and the showrunners own sophomoric sensibilities.  

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48 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

They had a lot of good material in AFfC and ADwD. There was no need to rush through all that in season 5 with a lot of nonsensical material. They could have still cut plot lines they did not want to use but actually stayed close to the material for the stuff they were actually adapting. I only have dim memories of the High Sparrow nonsense, but man were those speeches bad. Not to mention all the Jon action hero shit.

And one can definitely say that there would have been no problem to properly adapt the missing two battles - the climaxes of ADwD that have been pushed to TWoW - because they were in part already written when ADwD came out and should be finished for quite some time right now. If they had wanted to do that properly they could have done so.

And especially to prevent to be in as shitty a position as they are now - a complete lack of proper source material to adapt - they certainly could have chosen at least two season, perhaps more for AFfC and ADwD. They dragged ASoS over two seasons, too.

Bottom line here is I think D&D had plenty of time and resources to get most of this stuff in. And they wasted those time and resources on bullshit.

Now if were talking about trying to do ASOIAF on a shoe string budget then I might agree, but then that raises the question if one ought to try to do it on a shoe string budget. 

Also, many of these secondary characters and their stories are interesting in their own right, even if they are not main characters.

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26 minutes ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

Okay @Cas Stark

Let's just say that you are right in saying that everything related to Dorne, every Greyjoy except for Theon, the Faceless Men, the Archmaesters of the Citadel, the Iron Bank, the smallfolk, fAegon/JonCon, Lady Stoneheart, R'hllor and the red priests, the magical prophecies, the Sealord, etc. are not important.

Let's say that that you are right to say that only two things matters: 1) the White Walkers and 2) the wars between the Targaryens, the Starks, the Lannisters and the Baratheons.

Make all of that make sense (on two giant ass continents, mind you) without including any of those things.

But before you do that....would you care to explain how can the Targaryen/Stark/Baratheon/Lannister conflict be one of the two most important things in the entire series if Stannis Baratheon -- the last Baratheon and the only Baratheon that has ever really mattered -- implodes and dies offscreen?

We'll wait.

 

ETA:

Oops you don't seem to think the Baratheons matter after all. Okay. Fine.

White Walkers and the conflicts between the Targaryens, Starks and Lannisters that spans across two large, different continents.

Make it a good story that makes sense.

Go.

This.

We don't know for sure how far this "ending" that GRRM told the showrunners goes.

Did they seat and talk about every character that exists in the books like:

This one dies.  This one burns his daughter and dies. This one is burned by dragon.

 

Did they talk about main revelations: Bran = 3EC, Jon's heritage, what are the WW? (without passing by every character and plots).

 

Did GRRM just told them about the last battle?

 

Was everything told? little details?

 

Things we got from the book that appeared as big revelations: Lady Stoneheart, Great Northern Conspiracy, Doran's Masterplan, The Horn of Joramun, Euron's dragonhorn, The destiny of fAegon, greyscale and the stonemen, the pink letter.

 

None of those will appear in the next chapters and that's for sure, so, do D&D really know about the fate of all those things? It seems very unlikely that none of those plots will somehow affect the "endgame"therefore i believe their knowledge of the "ending" is pretty limited.

 

Yeah, we will probably get the right person sitting the iron throne at the end and some romance made right, and the way the others are beated but that seems all.

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Just now, OldGimletEye said:

Also, many of these secondary characters and their stories are interesting in their own right, even if they are not main characters.

Sure, but main point just is that guys like Robb and Tywin and Robert and Ned really are tertiary in the grand scale of things from the point of view of the entire ASoIaF series whereas people like Aegon, Euron, Arianne, Aeron, Doran, the High Septon, etc. might turn out to be secondary or even main characters. We don't know who is the most important of those, of course, but every character that's introduced right now is going to be very important for the plot. Such characters don't show up to die, they fulfill a function at a point in the overall story when the finale is closer than it was in the first three books.

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