A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones Spoiler-Filled Discussion

[Shurik]

So who was the character that dies in book 3 who died in S1? I was wondering did I miss it? I didn't notice anything so I did some searching today.

Me neither, unless you count Marillion's "death" as a bard, so that he won't be able to settle at Lysa's court.

It was sad watching the final episode, knowing that all those heroic scenes of setup of things to come will end by almost everyone dying various horrible deaths. King In The North - ends with Red Wedding. Night's Watch marching north - almost everyone, including Mormont, died. Renly and Stannis plotting against Joffrey - one dead and one ran off to the Wall. Theon pledging loyalty to Robb - he betrays Robb and then is betrayed by Bolton's bastard.

Those books are fucking sad.

[Brendan Moody]

^I've been rereading the series in preparation for the new book, and having much the same thoughts. Characters keep thinking and hoping and praying about what they'll do in the future, and I keep saying to myself, "No, won't happen, he'll die and you'll be crippled and you'll be kidnapped and..."

Of possible interest to readers of this thread: an interview where, depending on how you read it, Sean Bean seems to confirm that Ned isn't Jon's father.

[Scout101]

Yep, not a series where it's beneficial to fall in love with any of the characters, for sure. Every time you start to like someone, and root for them to fix the mess that's going on, they usually die pretty quickly (and horribly) after that.

Then again, as the entire saga is called a song of Ice and Fire, I've always been operating under the assumption that most of the stuff going on in King's Landing is meaningless (although entertaining), and the important stuff is tied up in the Wall and Danys (and her dragons). Since the rest of the characters seem content slashing away at each other and/or self-destructing, Jon and Danys are likely to be the only two left standing anyway...

[Shurik]

Scout101 wrote:

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Yep, not a series where it's beneficial to fall in love with any of the characters, for sure. Every time you start to like someone, and root for them to fix the mess that's going on, they usually die pretty quickly (and horribly) after that.

Then again, as the entire saga is called a song of Ice and Fire, I've always been operating under the assumption that most of the stuff going on in King's Landing is meaningless (although entertaining), and the important stuff is tied up in the Wall and Danys (and her dragons). Since the rest of the characters seem content slashing away at each other and/or self-destructing, Jon and Danys are likely to be the only two left standing anyway...

I'm pretty sure Tyrion, Arya, Bran and Sansa are safe too. Maybe even Rickon, if we'll ever meet him again. The rest of the "main" characters, those who are still alive by the end of fourth book anyway, will probably die somewhere along the way.

Since the Red Wedding scene I'm not rooting for anyone to fix the mess. The mess in Westeros cannot be fixed, and whatever was left more or less functioning when Tywin was ruling as Hand after Tyrion was injured, was destroyed beyond repair by Cercei's exponential stupidity. I'm actually rooting for Ironborn to conquer Westeros, because Crow's Eye's insanity is much cooler than anyone else's.

[Venardhi]

And that right there is why you don't tell actors any specifics about spoilers that big.

[Kegg]

Shurik wrote:

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I'm pretty sure Tyrion, Arya, Bran and Sansa are safe too. Maybe even Rickon, if we'll ever meet him again.

One set of arc words that really stuck with me from the novels is 'there must always be a Stark in Winterfell.' GRRM loves upending expectations, sure, and the Stark family has been all but massacred.. yet I could see these books ending with Lord Rickon Stark ensconced at Winterfell. Like Tommen, he was introduced as a prefunctory additional brother, and that might be the point of him... or not.

Since the Red Wedding scene I'm not rooting for anyone to fix the mess.

Really, eh?

I don't know. The Red Wedding was shocking, but the books never seemed to have much faith in the Young Wolf, who sometimes felt like he was off being the hero and doing interesting things while we're faffing about with Arya. I always suspected Robb would die (Catelyn dying is what surprised me), it was just a matter of where and when.

The Starks had too limited an interest to really be the ones to 'fix' the realm, anyway. They only wanted to be Kings in the North, and it took all of Westeros to repulse the Others last time around.

In some ways Ned seems to have had the better idea with Stannis - not that Stannis is an ideal choice, and he seems to be set up for a pretty bad fall (in believing falsely he has the Lightbringer and all that) but of the available Westerosi options for that iron chair at least he's interested in defending the realm as a whole. There is someone I think who is far better suited but between the choices of various Baratheons and the old Stark blood Stannis was decent enough...

I'm actually rooting for Ironborn to conquer Westeros, because Crow's Eye's insanity is much cooler than anyone else's.

...I'm still rooting for Daenerys. I always liked her, but really fell in love with her rise in Storm of Swords. I am but a girl and I know little of war...

That a lot of signs have been pointing to her being the one person who genuinely could fix this mess - and by 'a lot of signs' I do mostly mean dear old Aemon - doesn't hurt. Even granted that GRRM likes gutting our would-be saviours Daenerys has spent a lot of time growing as a ruler and leader of men, and if she can't bring the fire to melt off the ice then I can't see Westeros as anything but doomed...

...although I do not consider it beneath GRRM to end the book series with the Others flooding the continent and killing everything in Westeros.

All this said, we may be rooting for the same thing, given the mad idea the Greyjoys now have that having Daenerys' hand would be the key to getting the Iron Throne and the whole damn kingdom. It'll be interesting to see how Dany deals with Ironborn and Dornish interest in her crown.

Me neither, unless you count Marillion's "death" as a bard, so that he won't be able to settle at Lysa's court.

Wait, that was Marillion?

I guess that must be what they meant.

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

Hyperspace05 wrote:

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Amen to that, I strongly agree with both of you. The Arya chapters were a repetitive chore through ACOK and ASOS, and did not get interesting again until AFFC - when she actually went somewhere. Again, she is a great character but criminally underused/misused in book 2 and 3.

Honestly, I feel like GRRM was basically stalling a lot of storylines until he could finish the war of the 5 kings, so there was a constant new diversion in Arya's wanderings. Same with Dany, whose storyline I quite like but still, oh she left one city, oh look here's another city she has to liberate... oh yeah, and another! It's all (interesting) diversion to kill time.

Sansa as well kind of just waits around for a book and a half in Kings Landing until she finally gets married to Tyrion and gets whisked off by Dontos.

This is an area I actually feel the TV show can streamline to the benefit of the story, and why I feel Storm of Swords should be one season, not split into two. Just cut out some of the meandering, and get to the meat of the particular storylines.

Plus in TV land, I feel 4 seasons without any Lannister comeuppance or real movement in the Dany storyline is just too much. I'd like to see Season 3 end with Joffrey's death, and if possible, Tywin's death as well.

[Kegg]

Stone_Cold_Sisko wrote:

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Honestly, I feel like GRRM was basically stalling a lot of storylines until he could finish the war of the 5 kings, so there was a constant new diversion in Arya's wanderings. Same with Dany, whose storyline I quite like but still, oh she left one city, oh look here's another city she has to liberate... oh yeah, and another! It's all (interesting) diversion to kill time.

Oh totally. Between the decision to not have a time jump and the decision for this to not be a trilogy of books, there's more filler-ish material as the series has gone on.

I really like Samwell, but it's hard for me to remember him doing anything particularly interesting in A Feast For Crows - he went to Braavos and then Oldtown so he could be in a position to do something interesting in a later book, wasn't that basically it?

Daenerys' plot in book two is particularly underwhelming, compared to the strong arc she had in the first book. And it's true that Daenerys' plot, more than anyone else's, has been building inexorably towards a specific goal, which can be pretty frustrating.

[Shurik]

All this said, we may be rooting for the same thing, given the mad idea the Greyjoys now have that having Daenerys' hand would be the key to getting the Iron Throne and the whole damn kingdom. It'll be interesting to see how Dany deals with Ironborn and Dornish interest in her crown.

Well, they don't have other options if they want to conquer Westeros. Their power is naval, not land-based (Asha was right in that regard when she spoke during the kingsmoot). So until they have the dragons, all they can do is make everyone's life miserable on western and southern shores of the continent.
It will be interesting to see what Victarion's journey to the Slaver's Bay will result in. This is one of the things I'm expecting the most in ADWD.

Wait, that was Marillion?

I guess that must be what they meant.

Yes, it was the same guy that went to the Eyre with Catelyn and co.

I really like Samwell, but it's hard for me to remember him doing anything particularly interesting in A Feast For Crows - he went to Braavos and then Oldtown so he could be in a position to do something interesting in a later book, wasn't that basically it?

I finished re-reading AFFC yesterday and it's amazing how little happens in the first 2/3 of the book. The most significant things that do happen there are Ironborn and Dorn stuff, the rest is Cercei being paranoid and stupid, Arya adjusting to the new place and Sam feeling sorry for himself and Gilly. Ah, and Brienne wandering around war-torn countryside on meaningless quest. It's basically 500 pages where nothing significant happens.

[Brendan Moody]

It's always interesting what does and doesn't strike particular readers as filler and/or uninteresting. I just finished rereading A Clash of Kings, and as usual I was more than a little bored by all of the Jon chapters, in which he does nothing but wander around beyond the wall learning surprising little about the wildlings. I liked the Dany chapters better, just because Qarth is a neat milieu, but she accomplishes absolutely nothing there. (Burning down the House of the Undying nets her nothing but prophecies that foreshadow future books.)

On the other hand, I like Arya's chapters in Clash, and I think they do a good job of setting up her transition from a tomboy to an assassin-in training, as well as showing how war affects ordinary people, something most epic fantasy blithely ignores. The problem is that Martin's laudable commitment to that realism then goes a bit overboard in Storm and Feast, and he spends too much time showing us the same characters leading miserable lives in the riverlands. That's my impression from the last time I read those books, anyway; I may change my mind as I come back to them in the next few weeks.

[Scout101]

The parts with Arya would be fine, if they had a little variety. It's just that the same thing keeps happening to her, like 3-4 different times. Good to get out and see the ravaged countryside, but we don't need to spend the whole series just seeing her be a captured serving girl in like 4 castles/camps. Got it. Same with Brianne. After all the build up and story time she gets, she really just shows us more wrecked countryside and downtrodden people. We waste a LOT of time on her, and outside the bit where she interacts with Jaime and humanizes/redeems him a bit, her entire character could be deleted from the book and you really wouldn't miss anything. Someone else could easily do the couple things she has to do, and most of them don't need doing anyway.

There seem to be several characters that GRRM has decided he needs towards the end of the series, and he's just stalling with them while he cleans up the rest. Tighter editing and he can probably trim at least an entire book out of this thing, and wrap it up. Of course, if i was getting paid by the book, and had a hit series, I probably wouldn't be watching the word count, either...

[Brendan Moody]

If he wanted to take advantage of being paid by the book, there are easier ways to do it than writing installments so massive they run the risk of being impossible to bind. I don't think Martin is afraid to minimize the importance of characters if he has nothing to write for them; that's why there are only four Bran chapters in Storm and only three chapters each in Feast for Sansa/Alayne and Arya. (When it was one big book, Feast was also going to have only four chapters of Tyrion.) There's clearly some purpose behind Arya's and then Brienne's sojourns in the riverlands. Whether that purpose warrants the pages spent on it... well, like I said, I'd have to get back to you on that once I reread the books.

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

I must say, depressed and slightly creepy TV Rickon is a lot more interesting than squealing little kid book Rickon.

[Kegg]

I get the feeling if you combined all of TV Rickon's appearances you'd get a clip that's under five minutes.

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

^^^
Possibly half that.