This kept coming up in the TV show discussion thread, so here's a place to come after episodes air to discuss the (sometimes significantly) different approach to characters/plot points in the TV show as compared to the Books.
This includes, but is not limited to, physical appearance (I thought The Dog would look like Dog the Bounty Hunter!), changing of details (Daenerys's age), different framing (her relationship with Drogo), etc.
The problem people had with going to the book thread is, there was a lot of non-tagged spoiler stuff, and stuff from the entire series of the books. This thread will still keep pace with the TV show, but will be entirely devoted to comparing the events in the episodes with the same events in the books.
A couple guidelines (beyond all the normal forum rules stuff):
1. No discussion of things that have not occurred in the TV show yet. There wasn't much of that happening before in the TV ONLY thread, so let's keep it that way. This includes things like "Oh, you'll find out more about them later." If you're not sure, don't.
2. Spoiler tag things that happened in the most recent and previous week's episodes. Don't worry about tagging anything from Season 1 anymore. Also, this means if you're more than 2 episodes behind, you probably wanna catch up before reading the most recent posts.
New Episodes air Sunday evenings on HBO!
This post is plain until I have time to tighten it up/make it handsome. If someone wants to do that for my thieving pleasure, feel free. I hunted for threads like this, did not see any, so also let me know if it's redundant (with a link to the other one so I can join in the discussion).
ANYWAY!
A couple of topics to start off on that were hushed in the previous thread:
From 4/1/12:
Daenerys is 13 in the books, not at least 18, and her character progression is significantly different as a result! She gets to about the same place, but the journey from scared little girl to Khaleesi of Dragons is a little different than from someone who had another 5 years of being abused/creeped on by Viserys.
Posts
That spat was very interesting.
Littlefinger, as a character, is being far less cagey on television than he is in the books up to this point. His telling of the Hound's story, to
But I really like how it looks on him. There is almost a dash of hubris thrown into the mix with his TV character, andI personally feel that it just makes sense.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Was that new in the show? I seem to remember that happening in the book, but I could be making that up because of how well it fits. He tries to play the same game he plays with Varys all the time, and gets put in his place. It was nice to see the little weasel scared.
Neither of those characters had PoVs in book 2.
Alright, put that way, that makes me remember it better. So cool, guess that passes the "I did not notice it's addition" test pretty well.
Regarding Littlefinger, I can't really see how anyone watching the show ever thought he was on Eddard Stark's side.
Show Littlefinger: Clearly a smarmy, manipulative ass from the beginning. Someone you should not trust, even a little bit. He even told you. Geeze. Take a hint.
Book Littlefinger: Hard to pin down, led Eddard by the nose, but was apparently helping him (until his ultimate betrayal led to a bad haircut for poor Lord Stark)
In the books, Varys came off a lot more sinister than he did in the show. I kind of felt both were a little more obvious in the show than in the books. Anyone else?
They obviously were more obvious. Littlefinger's now-famous lesbian sexposition scene laid it all on the table in a way that practically force-fed you the nature of his character.
Varys's interactions are also more obvious - the conversation in the throne room between Varys and Littlefinger was wholly fabricated for the show, and while I loved the scene immensely, it revealed a lot more about both men than the book had by that point.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Yeah I've been wondering how they tie in Rhaegar and Lyanna's importance without all the little hints littered throughout book 1.
Same, Sansa especially. Her constant POVs in a couple of the books is actually what pretty much drove me from them.
It's funny, as soon as I heard he was getting cast I was thrilled. And yet the Littlefinger he's delivering is totally not the one I had in my head, and his characterization in general is a bit off from the books.
But that's OK, TV!Littlefinger is a pretty interesting character too. In the books he always seems very in control, whereas on TV there's just generally a little something off in the way he behaves. A little bit of craziness peeking in from behind the facade. So to me in was understandable that he'd try to play his "I know you know I know" game against Cersei once she started needling him about him childhood and Catelyn.
I understand why (time and budget), but it was still disappointing.
Why ride to battle when you can take a time-travel hammer to the face?
I don't think the show did enough to emphasize just how large a man Gregor is. His only real contrast was against Loras, who is a 96 pound twink, and the Hound, who is a very large man himself. That and I think the show is losing all the subtlety of the books.
On the plus side, Arya is awesome. The King in the North is awesome. Jon Snow looks right, but he lays the emo on way too thick, which is saying something for a very emo character. Dolorous Edd spoke one line and he was instantly recognizable as Dolorous Edd.
And if what I've heard is accurate, it only gets work next ep.
They should mark her scenes in the script with GNDN, like the conduits and stuff on the original Star Trek.
Not sure what you're referring to with GNDN, but If they're going to use her in place of a certain prostitute, then I think it makes sense from the standpoint of not introducing more new characters than necessary.
It's almost certainly because they don't want to introduce plotlines that won't be paid off for years now.
Her scenes go nowhere and do nothing.
I didn't like it because:
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Aside from Grand Maester Pycelle, what guys were unattractive? At least Drogo and Theon are decent, right?
Actually, it's occurred to be that Loras and Lancel were probably cast to appeal to the same subset of the audience.
Drogo was the main bit of fanservice for the ladies!
Well, at least after he stopped being rapey anyway.
Littflefinger is pretty crazy in the book; not off the wall crazy but he certainly isn't Mr. Straight Arrow. He just also happens to be crafty and responsible for most of the nastiness that occurs in the book.
Meli looks great.
Stannis looks great.
Davos looks thicker-set than I was expecting; given his past, I expected a rather thinner guy.
Ser Dontos looks super-different; I wasn't expecting mutton-chops and portliness at all there.
Craster is surprisingly well groomed for a daughter-fucking wildling dickbag. Like others, I was expecting closer to Frey for Craster.
And yeah, Littlefinger is being played so overtly in the TV series compared to how he is in the books. Very strange, especially given who he's taunting. He can taunt Varys because he knows he's better than Varys; Cersei on the other hand he should already know is a cagey bitch when she's insulted...
Sure, Cersei wouldn't have necessarily killed him right there, but an accident would probably have befallen him shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, Littlefinger took a gigantic risk for no possible gain. The whole thing was just kind of dumb.
Oh man, yeah. I think we all have to have a couple POV characters that just drive us nuts. The ones where when you turn the page and see that fucking name you just wind up putting it down for a bit until you can bring yourself to listen to their bullshit for a chapter.
I can't say who mine is, for spoilerific reasons.
But man, every. fucking. time.
I think last time I put it down for nearly a month.
The TV series is not the book series, it's pointless to complain about them having differences. Fine, your conception of the book character wouldn't have that conversation with your conception of that other book character. That doesn't mean anything to the quality of the scene in the adaptation though. Just because it's not characterizing Littlefinger in quite the same way doesn't matter, Shae's totally different, Osha's pretty different, Robb's more fleshed out, Sansa's not actually very annoying, Catelyn's not as much of a bitch and Cersei is actually smart instead of just Smarter-than-Ned-and-Sansa.
I had assumed so but I don't think we're ever explicitly told that. Not that I mind, as the actress is very nice
General season 2: I am extremely pleased with Stannis. The show creators have done a great job laying Stannis' lawful neutralness bare with very little screentime. One thing with the show is I wish they had "Extended cuts" of each episode for the dvd/br release
I didn't think we were complaining. Just contrasting and commenting. Discussing the differences is interesting. If it irritates you that we're engaging in a topic that 'doesn't matter', I'm sorry?
Except we aren't seeing her inner monologue which helps make her less annoying. Barely. She was pretty intolerable in season one (to Sophie Turner's credit).
Yeah, I don't get all the Sansa hate. Admittedly, the EARLY chapters with her were kind of lame with the "Oh, la la, I'm gonna marry a Prince. My sister is dirty and stupid. I like sewing" into unhinged PTSD Sansa, which you kinda get in the show, but was pretty dramatic/compelling in the book.