THE GAME OF THRONES/ASOIAF SPOILER THREAD (WARNING: SPOILERS)

it's deffo subtextually implied his allegiance to the targ's isn't just an honor thing

obviously anything the show abandons has to be ultimately inconsequential and i am a little saddened by the sheer volume of inconsequential things. not surprised of course, but still it is kinda sucks to have read thru the books and thought, e.g. this oldtown stuff seems like it could be cool, and then while waiting for that to develop have some dudes take the plot from start to finish and dump that part in the garbage.

that is def the struggle, for every two inconsequential detours or characters there is def one sort of interesting one that will be sliced away

maybe they'll keep quentyn and send bronn and jamie off with him. kinda hard to believe that they would axe a sub-plot where a nice westerosi boy gets burned to death by dragons

just realized they kinda finessed varys and Tyrion thing whereas varys can quietly slither back to kings landing offscreen and do what he has to do in episode 10

what is varys's standing in the books w/r/t tywin's death and tyrion's escape? i made be remembering incorrectly but i feel like he is more definitely implicated in the show than the books.

pretty sure he plays a major role in the books too

jaime holds varys at knifepoint and coerces him into aiding the escape in the books. in the show, jaime lets him out and varys gets him to the ship and you don't see any interaction between jaime and varys

Quentyn wasn't even cast, I don't think.

With all the sudden focus on Lyanna and Rhae-Rhae, I'm wondering if the show runners are making a late push to lay the groundwork for R+L.

Thought that was kinda explicit with the Stannis and Baelish exposition speeches

yeah i feel like the last episode was def the beginning of confirming r + l = j

sorry i was talking about how much is public knowledge re varys's involvement. i.e. is he in hiding at kings landing in the books?

In the books, the small council takes Varys's disappearance as his an admission of his complicity in Tyrion's various crimes.

And I think he skedaddled right after the Purple Nurple Wedding.

Oops, nm, Varys testified against Tyrion in the books too.

yeah varys disappears w/o a trace after tyrion escapes and we don't see or hear of him again until the very end of a dance w/ dragons

ah right, thanks

yeah i feel like the last episode was def the beginning of confirming r + l = j

― Clay, Tuesday, May 5, 2015 3:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is this a going theory?

oh yes

yeah I just googled and apparently I am ~not~ in the loop

it's like THE theory, i straight up don't get how one could read even the first book and not come away with that conclusion

sorry dogg

his stuff is just not happening in the show. I'm sure they'll find a way to kill off Balon (he was in melisandre's leech prophecies on the show right?) and install Yara in his place or something to tie the islands plot off, but I don't think we're getting more than that.

Thank god if this is the case, what a slog these sections were. Though the Iron Islanders in Slaver's Bay are about to kick off in a major way in the books no?

bump (for if readers want to debate sansagate)

i think there's a difference between the event happening and whether it needed to be depicted on screen -- so that scene was not necessary, especially considering it wasn't part of source text

― Mistah FAAB (sarahell), Wednesday, May 20, 2015 4:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a fair point although if they had depicted the source text of that scene (with its original victim, let's speculate they somehow kept jeyne poole around as fake arya)...i don't even want to imagine what the reactions would be, and they would be even more understandable than these are

i'm not going to stop watching the show, but that was a low point for me. like campy sand snakes, and the romance with marcella and dorne dude that didn't exist in the books, fine -- this was just the worst so far this season

right - and the obvious path of least resistance is that you dump the idea of showing it altogether, and say you imply that ramsay is being brutal without showing it on a scene-by-scene basis. (its an easy thing for us to infer!) i wouldnt be surprised if in the writers' minds that they view this atrocity as just another awful thing ramsay has done, on par with castrating/flaying theon, destroying him mentally, threatening him with rape etc but i dont know how i feel about such a perspective myself. yeeesj.

it was def a bad episode by the show's standards and the scene made it worse.

*yeeeesh

i thought trystane/myrcella was kinda cute! sappy as hell for sure though

my friend Julia Gfrörer posted a really cogent defense of these scenes as necessary as an exposé of sexual violence as a product of marriage in westerosi society a couple days ago, ie this patriarchy isn't substantially different from our own, but most narratives gloss over it http://boiledleather.com/post/119334044248/m00n-creature-boiledleather-julia-gfrorer

but yeah that being said this episode was, one hopes, a nadir for the show

you imply that ramsay is being brutal without showing it on a scene-by-scene basis. (its an easy thing for us to infer!)

exactly -- use the audience's power of imagination -- idk. it felt gratuitous and creatively lazy

If they really want to expose rape as a fundamental part of marriage, perhaps not use the horrific monster to show it? Perhaps show how horrific a normal marriage could be.

If they really want to expose rape as a fundamental part of marriage, perhaps not use the horrific monster to show it? Perhaps show how horrific a normal marriage could be.

Not that I've gone out of my way to delve into this issue, but this point is very good.

that is def fair and would be a thousand times more interesting for sure

right - and the obvious path of least resistance is that you dump the idea of showing it altogether, and say you imply that ramsay is being brutal without showing it on a scene-by-scene basis..

― slothroprhymes, Wednesday, May 20, 2015

exactly -- use the audience's power of imagination -- idk. it felt gratuitous and creatively lazy

― Mistah FAAB (sarahell), Wednesday, May 20, 2015

but being forced to watch is the point of the scene right? theon's being forced to watch, and that level of horror and outrage is what it's going to take for him to dare cross ramsay (who's done a lot worse to him than to sansa) and help her escape. so to the extent that we're horrified and outraged, job well done i guess.

there's a strand of argument that says staging this scene as part of theon's story is "just as bad" because it derails the sansa-empowerment story that's been dangled. but that's just the fantasy littlefinger's sold her (and us), and watching cherished fantasies go down the drain is pretty much the show's mo since Ned lost his head instead of catching that trip to the wall, if not since lancelot got off guinevere to push a kid out a window.

I dunno, for once whichever MRA is first to be all #remembertheonsdick may have a point. that said, the jeyne poole story is even nastier and I reserve the right to throw my tv out the window if things actually get worse from here.

the other thing with the way the story's been changed, having Sansa there, is how is she going to trust/want to go along with the guy she believes killed her brothers?

xp yeaaaaa, the sentence that ends the chapter containing the jeyne poole scene is forever burned into my brain & i hate it

well i assume he'll fess up that they're not dead. this entire storyline is a problem and underscores the larger issue: streamlining storylines is fine given the real-world considerations of global production and actors' contracts etc but as the writers lose the ability to cherrypick from the pile of GRRM's already-written strongest scenes and zingers the show is starting to feel a lot more hercules/xena in general.

counterpoint: Hercules/Xena often ruled

well, yeah

I still am resenting the fact they cut dumb Dorne boy who gets incinerated by Dany's dragons

There are a dozen better ways that lazy and cynical wedding night scene could have played out while retaining its inherent nastiness.

Dorne stuff ridiculous.

please do list them

Oh, I dunno. Littlefinger better preps her for her fate or at least acknowledges (how can he not know?) she is marrying a psycho, and warns her she is in for hell, but convinces her the reward will be worth the horror. Or rather than showing (as such) the rape, they just have it take place behind closed doors and imply it. Or instead of depicting Sansa's torture at the hands of a known vile reprobate reveal that she is steeled up to submit to his aggression for the sake of a bigger picture (a la Dany did). Or have her tell off his equally psycho underling (Miranda?) with a "you don't know who you're fucking with," have one of the North folk kill her, then later as Ramsay advances cut to a lantern in the high tower. Or strike Ramsay with impotence.. Or just have her kill Ramsay, since Roose is already expecting a new son/heir. And so on. Really, since they're deviating from the book, the sky is the limit, even within the restrictions Martin has implicitly set. Martin pointed out in his own reaction how the show is basically dealing with the repercussions of changes it made several seasons ago, so it's not like there's a "right" way to handle the story, if they're going off-book. The scene, at least with what we know, does nothing to develop the Ramsay character (whose torture of Theon already overdid it), Theon (who has been in a state of fear and disgust since the aforementioned), or Sansa (who has had to deal with tons of shit since the first moments of the show, iirc).

Expecting Sansa to have taken some measure of vengeance immediately on Ramsay/prevent what happened from happening seems to be as Pollyanna-ish as expecting Arya to save Ned from his execution.

Littlefinger is like Walter White in constantly winging it and lucking out so don't think he would trust Sansa to survive the Boltons - he's just gambling on it so he has a chance to take the North himself. It's preposterous but as he said "the climb is all there is".

The scene, at least with what we know, does nothing to develop the Ramsay character (whose torture of Theon already overdid it), Theon (who has been in a state of fear and disgust since the aforementioned), or Sansa (who has had to deal with tons of shit since the first moments of the show, iirc).

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, May 20, 2015

but this is rong tho. being forced to watch this is precisely the turn for theon. and we'll buy it when it comes bc we've been forced to watch too.

Which is a legit criticism I've encountered, that making this about Theon further robs Sansa of strength. Besides, why would this be the turn? He's already killed children and passed them off as her siblings. He's been tortured and emasculated at length by a monster. He's been turned into a slobbering dog. Why would the rape of the pseudo-sibling he totally sold out make sense as the straw that breaks his back?

Certainly Sansa could have killed Ramsay this early, given all the screen time spent showing him to be death-worthy and her tortured. Maybe she won't take vengeance at all, but at this point, there has been an awful lot of waiting for Sansa to fight back in some way. Because the alternative is she dies (which given all she's put up with would be ironically anti-climactic) or do nothing, which makes her a dead end.

My point is the show can do whatever it wants. Someone else pointed out that the new R-rated, non-stop violence Mad Max movie is literally about the liberation of model-hot sex slaves, and yet it avoids depictions of sex and sexual assault, let alone nudity, and leaves the bad stuff to the imagination (without ever lingering on it, or even speaking much about it), trusting the audience to put two and two together. But of course, trusting the audience is generally not one of the strengths of TV (let alone movies) but this far along in the show after so much nastiness it really does strike me as cynical to default to shock tactics. They already had the water cooler crowd cornered.

Which is a legit criticism I've encountered, that making this about Theon further robs Sansa of strength.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, May 20, 2015

addressed upthread. this is "legit" if and only if you believe we're supposed to be seeing sansa achieve some sort of agency this season. that's a fantasy that littlefinger's offered her (and us), but raising and then dashing our hopes is kinda this show's thing so...