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Post by Weasel Pie on Aug 26, 2017 14:53:02 GMT
Season Finale tomorrow night! Please no spoilers until it's aired!
Spoiler all you want now.
Some general thoughts about the ruination of two of my favorite book characters.
Varys has been useless since being Tyrion's pooper-scooper aboard the getaway ship. Not even a word from Cersei about Varys mysteriously vanishing when Tywin was murdered, then reappearing in Dany's camp as silent background sidekick/emergency maester/ambassador. With all his skills, shouldn't he have been running recon all over Westeros? Surely a single little bird could have reported Euron's thousand ships travelling half the length of Westeros then back up again? While I want to believe there's a method to the madness, I put this all down to lazy writing and a rush to the finish line.
Littlefinger. While always a bit of a cartoon on the show, at least we got a glimpse of his power/capabilities during the scenes at the Eyrie. We've never gotten an explanation why he so willingly handed Sansa over to the Boltons. And again, Cersei doesn't seem to care that he's screwed over the Lannisters time and time again. He wants to be King with Sansa as his Queen? Are we really supposed to believe that is his motivation for everything?
I'm thinking the show has more up it's sleeve for Littlefinger, either as the last Reyne or a Faceless Man* or who knows what, but Varys was one of television's more unique characters. They hinted at his power with the sorcerer-in-a-box scene but never followed up. Then they gave Qyburn the role of Pycelle assassin. Whataver else Melisandre was hinting at, all we know for sure is that he'll end up dead in Westeros.
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On rewatches, I'm getting a glimmer that Littlefinger is a faceless man. Will expand on this more after the finale, but it seems to me he's been playing the game of faces all along - above and beyond being just a liar.
ETA - Welp. I guess when D&D doesn't know how to develop a character, they just use them to propel another agenda. So depressed.
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Aug 26, 2017 15:07:09 GMT
I put this all down to lazy writing and a rush to the finish line. IMO this line sums up my feelings about the last two seasons, really. Varys and Littlefinger are but two of the casualties of D&D's giant plot sinkhole. I think HBO deliberately hires showrunners who throw pots full of drama noodles at the wall in the last couple of seasons, and whatever sticks, they design a season around it. Every HBO show I've ever watched (that has had a full multi-season run) has had this problem and GoT is no exception. Makes me nuts. On rewatches, I'm getting a glimmer that Littlefinger is a faceless man. With you on the glimmers...but I feel that the show will completely fail to take this anywhere, probably just giving a quick "Oh, here's what we were getting at with that" in the Outside the Episode they way they usually do when they don't have the skill to convey it in the show itself. If LF is associated with the FM (which seems very plausible), we'll have to wait for the books to get any kind of development and/or explanation of it because the show has no intention of going there. Even without the spoilers, I am decidedly meh about the finale. The whole thing is just making me angry. Worse, I don't know where to direct it - is this hot steaming pile of poo a D&D thing or a GRRM thing? Will the books still have this disastrous storyline? Will we even get the books to find out? Urgh.
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Post by Weasel Pie on Aug 26, 2017 15:14:00 GMT
Will we even get the books to find out? Old Turtle has some recent snark on his blaargh that there will be one or maybe two publications about Westeros in 2018, and he had already stated that an installment of Fire and Blood/the GRRMarillion will probably be ready before WoW. So we may not see WoW til 2019. If ever. Worse is the fact that Ran has been hinting - without any finesse as all - that HE is the fifth mystery-pitcher of a "successor show." And GRRM pretty much confirmed it. Without derailing my own topic (heh) who do you think we might be stuck with to finish the stories if GRRM doesn't?
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Aug 27, 2017 2:02:07 GMT
So we may not see WoW til 2019. If ever. Yeah, like I said before, I think we'll get Winds in 2019ish, and will never see Dream. Worse is the fact that Ran has been hinting - without any finesse as all - that HE is the fifth mystery-pitcher of a "successor show." And GRRM pretty much confirmed it. WTAF???!?!? Where was THIS stated? I totally missed that one! And, as if it needed to be said, AYFKM on Ran...holy crap, just nooooooo..... Without derailing my own topic (heh) who do you think we might be stuck with to finish the stories if GRRM doesn't? Um, maybe his wife, when she makes bank years after his death by publishing a collection of his papers that contains unpublished never-before-seen pages from ASOAIF? That's the closest we'll come, imo. He has no intention of letting anyone finish his work. That's the salt on the wound for me, knowing that we may never get a GRRM ending because he's petty AF.
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Post by Weasel Pie on Aug 27, 2017 13:35:37 GMT
Not outright stated, but something he seemed to be hinting at - and my radar went off but I wasn't sure what it could mean - having to do with the number of writers involved in creating new pitches for succession shows - he kept saying "four (or five)" which is odd language for a someone to repeatedly use, unless there's a deeper meaning. At the least it seemed like he had inside info. But when George confirmed it was 5 on his blog, it was obviously important enough to have been an issue of some secrecy. So either Ran and Linda are putting together a pitch or Old Turtle himself is and they knew about it but couldn't confirm. Actually it's probably more likely that's what Germ has been busy doing. :/ That and Fire and Blood of course.
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Aug 27, 2017 14:10:04 GMT
I saw that he mentioned the 5th on NaB, saying it was someone as knowledgeable in the material as him, but didn't even think of Ran for some reason. I....don't know how to feel about that.
RaLinda did say at one of their Q&As that they had a contract for volume 2 of TWOIAF, but GRRM wanted to get Fire & Blood out the door first.
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Post by min on Aug 27, 2017 23:08:34 GMT
I haven't been able to watch at all since I don't have cable. So I had to watch a script spoiler for the episode on youtube. I'm going to barf. If what I saw is true; I'm quitting Martin for good.
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Aug 27, 2017 23:14:29 GMT
Yep. I saw the reddit leaks about it last year, and blew it off - thinking, "Oh, there's no way it's going to be THAT bad, fake news." And then the post-production leaks hit, and yes...it really was that bad.
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Post by cooterian15 on Aug 28, 2017 17:20:53 GMT
Will we even get the books to find out? Old Turtle has some recent snark on his blaargh that there will be one or maybe two publications about Westeros in 2018, and he had already stated that an installment of Fire and Blood/the GRRMarillion will probably be ready before WoW. So we may not see WoW til 2019. If ever. Worse is the fact that Ran has been hinting - without any finesse as all - that HE is the fifth mystery-pitcher of a "successor show." And GRRM pretty much confirmed it. Without derailing my own topic (heh) who do you think we might be stuck with to finish the stories if GRRM doesn't?It's not a pleasant thought, especially since I had to recently suffer through book 4 of the Stieg Larsson trilogy on Elisabeth Salander (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). The fourth book was written after Larsson's death by David Lagercrantz was titled "the Girl in the Spider's Web". It wasn't very good and just did not move with the effortless freedom as Larsson's trilogy did. My point is that the prospects of someone else picking up the story and finishing it will likely leave us all very disappointed. I suppose there is a small glimmer of hope if GRRM has some sort of road map or list of ideas on how to close the story out, which I don't know if anything like this exists or not. I'm not familiar with his writing techniques nor about his processes on keeping track of current and future events.
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Post by min on Aug 28, 2017 18:37:40 GMT
Old Turtle has some recent snark on his blaargh that there will be one or maybe two publications about Westeros in 2018, and he had already stated that an installment of Fire and Blood/the GRRMarillion will probably be ready before WoW. So we may not see WoW til 2019. If ever. Worse is the fact that Ran has been hinting - without any finesse as all - that HE is the fifth mystery-pitcher of a "successor show." And GRRM pretty much confirmed it. Without derailing my own topic (heh) who do you think we might be stuck with to finish the stories if GRRM doesn't?It's not a pleasant thought, especially since I had to recently suffer through book 4 of the Stieg Larsson trilogy on Elisabeth Salander (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). The fourth book was written after Larsson's death by David Lagercrantz was titled "the Girl in the Spider's Web". It wasn't very good and just did not move with the effortless freedom as Larsson's trilogy did. My point is that the prospects of someone else picking up the story and finishing it will likely leave us all very disappointed. I suppose there is a small glimmer of hope if GRRM has some sort of road map or list of ideas on how to close the story out, which I don't know if anything like this exists or not. I'm not familiar with his writing techniques nor about his processes on keeping track of current and future events. Oh no! I have the Girl in the Spider's Web on my bookshelf unread at this point. The most I am hoping for is that GRRM will finish the next book and after that I think all bets are off. I am however delighted with Yan Martel's book The High Mountains of Portugal.
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