Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[MediumHigh]

My assumption is that all the gods in game of thrones exist as psychic constructs that may or may not manifest into the physical world. At some point of prehistory the world was very magical, than shit and stuff happened and the world became less magical which in turn made people not believe in magic/gods, which in turn made the world less magical.

[Bungee]

My assumption is that all the gods in game of thrones exist as psychic constructs that may or may not manifest into the physical world. At some point of prehistory the world was very magical, than shit and stuff happened and the world became less magical which in turn made people not believe in magic/gods, which in turn made the world less magical.

Hence why the pyromancers had such and easy time producing wildfire from when the dragons hatched onwards.

[Tannhauser]

My assumption is that all the gods in game of thrones exist as psychic constructs that may or may not manifest into the physical world. At some point of prehistory the world was very magical, than shit and stuff happened and the world became less magical which in turn made people not believe in magic/gods, which in turn made the world less magical.

At first I shook my head sadly at your post, then I nodded in agreement.  I like this idea.

What if magic stirs when the red comet appears and dwindles down when the comet moves away?  It puts out magical 'radiation' some have learned how to utilize it in different forms.

[Shannow]

Dragons back? Red star? I've heard this story before...

[Riggswolfe]

 Same for Jon Snow, although Jon Snow in a wolf's body might also be on the cards.

Regardless of it possibly happening in the books I don't think it'll happen in the TV show for two reasons:

1) The TV show hasn't shown any Warg powers for Jon at all

2) Budget. I've heard rumblings they rarely show the Direwolves because it is expensive. If they put Jon into Ghost's body they'll need to show Ghost more often.

[Chimpy]

I still doubt there is any grand plan. I think Martin thought up just enough of a backstory on the world to frame his cast of houses for his rebelling of the War of the Roses and then just ran with it.

But I am a cynic.

[Threash]

 Same for Jon Snow, although Jon Snow in a wolf's body might also be on the cards.

Regardless of it possibly happening in the books I don't think it'll happen in the TV show for two reasons:

1) The TV show hasn't shown any Warg powers for Jon at all

2) Budget. I've heard rumblings they rarely show the Direwolves because it is expensive. If they put Jon into Ghost's body they'll need to show Ghost more often.

And 3 because it would mean recasting the actor, which is really the main reason it won't happen.

[Merusk]

I still doubt there is any grand plan. I think Martin thought up just enough of a backstory on the world to frame his cast of houses for his rebelling of the War of the Roses and then just ran with it.

But I am a cynic.

I don't think you're not totally wrong. There's a story somewhere around that another author read an early draft of Game and said something like, "George, you're writing fantasy. At some point you've got to include magic."

Martin himself has said he wasn't sure he wanted to include it, and tries to keep it minimal. Initially thinking of leaving out dragons entierly.
http://teamcoco.com/video/george-r-r-martin-wasn-t-sure-he-wanted-dragons-in-game-of-thrones

These do not sound like grand world plans where this is integral. It sounds more like "This might be cool/ useful to my political plot, so let's throw it in."

[jgsugden]

Do 15 seconds of internet research and you'll find the original outline for GoT as a novel series (his early 90s plans when he'd written the first 13 chapters of GoT), including who was supposed to live, who was supposed to die, and almost everything about the original plan. 

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/02/game-of-thrones-outline

The core is still beating true, but there are some big changes.  He isn't winging it - although he continues to refine the plan as he writes and realizes certain things he planned are just not working on the page the way he envisioned.  If you gave a 30 second summary of the entire story as planned and the story we'll see in the tv / books, I think they'd be about the same.  If you expanded it to a minute and had a chance to talk about some of the 2nd tier characters as opposed to the core characters, you'd start to hear different summaries.

The TV folks were provided with a summary of the major plot points, including the ending Martin had planned in the novels for each main character, back in 2013.  They're making changes, but they are keeping the heart true.

Book 1 was intended to cover what took place in roughly books 1 to 3.  Most of the action in books 4 and 5 were intended to take place between books 1 and 2.  Basically, books 6 and 7 are intended to be what we'd have seen in books 2 and 3. 

[eldaec]

Would be pretty weird to write all those dream sequences and prophecies in the first two books without deciding what they mean.

[HaemishM]

Stannis is dead. I can't see why anyone would think otherwise. Whether he returns as Zombie Stannis next season is up for debate. He told Brienne "Do your duty" because the only duty he knew that she had was to protect/avenge her king, the brother he killed. She did not spare him his just punishment.

This season was a letdown because the books it's based on were HUGE letdowns. Books 4 and 5 had a shitton of new characters introduced that weren't included in the show at all (and thus current characters had to take their place), and they both had a shitton of story threads, and despite the two books being over 2000 pages combined, I'm not sure you could say there was one good or complete story resolution in ANY of those threads. Most of them just ended and not even on a cliffhanger - it felt like they ended in mid-fucking-sentence. Which is pretty much the way the show felt all season long. The Dorne plot felt pointless because we don't have any idea what the point of it was, even in the books, because it didn't resolve. The same goes for Cersei's dalliance with religious zealotry, or the conflict in Mereen, or Jon's efforts at the wall. The Stannis quest for the the throne was really the only good resolution we had. Everything else was just left dangling.

[eldaec]

Much more true for the show than the books.

In the books Doran did manage to unite the Dornish contingent. Sam's journey has an adequate ending, KL is a much more complete view of the city falling to chaos (and a logical end point).

Plus there are a number of smaller stories like the kingsmoot, siege of Riverrun, aegon's journey, victaron's journey, Quentyn, Davos quest, Manderly's revenge, secret agent Mance. Basically everything that got dropped for more Hypnoboobs and more Ramsey.

[Lantyssa]

Stannis is dead. I can't see why anyone would think otherwise. Whether he returns as Zombie Stannis next season is up for debate. He told Brienne "Do your duty" because the only duty he knew that she had was to protect/avenge her king, the brother he killed. She did not spare him his just punishment.

That's what Stannis said because he won't fault someone for doing their duty (and he's a broken man now).  Whether Brianne did or not is left for us to ponder.  Enlisting him to save Sansa would not be out of character no matter how much she hates him.

I don't expect they'll all make an appearance, but I would not be surprised by not-killed Stannis, zombie-Jon, zombie-Caitlyn, not-dead Sandor, or several others showing up next season.  The question is, do we have one or two more seasons left in the show?

[Riggswolfe]

Much more true for the show than the books.

In the books Doran did manage to unite the Dornish contingent. Sam's journey has an adequate ending, KL is a much more complete view of the city falling to chaos (and a logical end point).

Plus there are a number of smaller stories like the kingsmoot, siege of Riverrun, aegon's journey, victaron's journey, Quentyn, Davos quest, Manderly's revenge, secret agent Mance. Basically everything that got dropped for more Hypnoboobs and more Ramsey.

To be honest, most of that shit? I'm glad they dropped it (though some may show up next season.) I lay most of the sucky parts of this season at the feet of Martin as books 4 and 5 were a slog I barely got through and the show had to adapt them.

[Samwise]

Stannis is dead. I can't see why anyone would think otherwise. Whether he returns as Zombie Stannis next season is up for debate. He told Brienne "Do your duty" because the only duty he knew that she had was to protect/avenge her king, the brother he killed. She did not spare him his just punishment.

That's what Stannis said because he won't fault someone for doing their duty (and he's a broken man now).  Whether Brianne did or not is left for us to ponder.  Enlisting him to save Sansa would not be out of character no matter how much she hates him.

It would be pretty stupid for Brienne to lose Sansa in pursuit of Stannis, only to recruit Stannis to help her find Sansa again, before she even knows that Sansa's slipped away.

So yeah, not out of character.    I like Brienne, she's good at killing people, but she's never come across as a master strategist.

[HaemishM]

For Brienne NOT to kill Stannis, she would have to forsake her vow to avenge the death not only of her king, but of the man she fell in love with. For her to let him live would be so totally out of character for her as to make her entire arc laughably stupid. If there's one thing she has been consistent with the entire arc is that she keeps her vows to a fault, even if it means her death.

[Merusk]

I don't expect they'll all make an appearance, but I would not be surprised by not-killed Stannis, zombie-Jon, zombie-Caitlyn, not-dead Sandor, or several others showing up next season.  The question is, do we have one or two more seasons left in the show?

I said the same thing to my wife and sister.  I expect next season to be full of zombies.

[Samwise]

For Brienne NOT to kill Stannis, she would have to forsake her vow to avenge the death not only of her king, but of the man she fell in love with. For her to let him live would be so totally out of character for her as to make her entire arc laughably stupid. If there's one thing she has been consistent with the entire arc is that she keeps her vows to a fault, even if it means her death.

She already put her Sansa vow on the back burner to go find Stannis.  That's why I can see an argument for it to be in character for her to put her Stannis vow on the back burner until she finds Sansa again.  SQUIRREL!

It would be a really stupid and clumsy way to keep that character in the plot, and I can't see Martin writing it that way, but this season has done a lot of stuff that seems clumsy according to previous seasons' standards, now that they're off the books.  Next season will assuredly have more of the same.  So who knows.

[eldaec]

Much more true for the show than the books.

In the books Doran did manage to unite the Dornish contingent. Sam's journey has an adequate ending, KL is a much more complete view of the city falling to chaos (and a logical end point).

Plus there are a number of smaller stories like the kingsmoot, siege of Riverrun, aegon's journey, victaron's journey, Quentyn, Davos quest, Manderly's revenge, secret agent Mance. Basically everything that got dropped for more Hypnoboobs and more Ramsey.

To be honest, most of that shit? I'm glad they dropped it (though some may show up next season.) I lay most of the sucky parts of this season at the feet of Martin as books 4 and 5 were a slog I barely got through and the show had to adapt them.

Winterfell I lay at Martin's door, and Hardhome was better than anything he wrote at the wall.

But I have a hard time with the argument that the Kingsmoot was less interesting than Littlefinger's ridiculous plan to be warden of the North, or that the Blackfish vs Jamie was worth dropping for Sand-Snakes-Play-Pat-a-Cake.

[Riggswolfe]

Much more true for the show than the books.

In the books Doran did manage to unite the Dornish contingent. Sam's journey has an adequate ending, KL is a much more complete view of the city falling to chaos (and a logical end point).

Plus there are a number of smaller stories like the kingsmoot, siege of Riverrun, aegon's journey, victaron's journey, Quentyn, Davos quest, Manderly's revenge, secret agent Mance. Basically everything that got dropped for more Hypnoboobs and more Ramsey.

To be honest, most of that shit? I'm glad they dropped it (though some may show up next season.) I lay most of the sucky parts of this season at the feet of Martin as books 4 and 5 were a slog I barely got through and the show had to adapt them.

Winterfell I lay at Martin's door, and Hardhome was better than anything he wrote at the wall.

But I have a hard time with the argument that the Kingsmoot was less interesting than Littlefinger's ridiculous plan to be warden of the North, or that the Blackfish vs Jamie was worth dropping for Sand-Snakes-Play-Pat-a-Cake.

I hated every moment of the Kingsmoot as much as I hated Dorne. They both felt like extra padding that only served to get me away from characters I gave a shit about to introduce new characters late in the story.

[Rendakor]

that the Blackfish vs Jamie was worth dropping for HypnoBoobs.

FIFY.

[Threash]

I hope there is a point to the whole Dorne shit that we haven't seen yet.  Without Arienne or Doran's long term plan for revenge there seems to be very little point.

[Shannow]

Well we'll get to see how batshit insane Cersei gets when she finds out Myrcella is dead. That should be fun.

[pants]

 Same for Jon Snow, although Jon Snow in a wolf's body might also be on the cards.

Regardless of it possibly happening in the books I don't think it'll happen in the TV show for two reasons:

1) The TV show hasn't shown any Warg powers for Jon at all

2) Budget. I've heard rumblings they rarely show the Direwolves because it is expensive. If they put Jon into Ghost's body they'll need to show Ghost more often.

And 3 because it would mean recasting the actor, which is really the main reason it won't happen.

While we're armchair quarterbacking, I'll throw in a counterpoint.  If they didn't want to use Ghost more, why did he appear out of nowhere to save Sam's bacon in ep 9 (8?)?  We haven't seen Ghost for absolutely ages, and then he appears as if to say "Hi, remember me?".  That can't be a coincidence - they could have dreamt up a dozen different ways for Sam to get out of that scrap with the other Nights Watchmen. 

[eldaec]

Because this season was written by hacks and it didn't occur to them to just have Thorne walk in.

If they wanted us to remember that Jon is a warg and that ghost is called ghost, the scene would have had Jon in it. Also someone on TV would have mentioned that wargs can live on in animals by now.

Besides, the obvious book purpose of Jon warging into ghost before being revived is to go take a look at events north if the wall. Hardhome covered that for the show. 

[K9]

These seem (mostly) on the money:



Jaime

Stannis

The North Remembers

Tyrion

The Thenns

Jeyne Westerling

Loras

Sansa

Three Eyed Crow

[Khaldun]

Like Haemish says, the source material for this season sucks, so not surprisingly, the season kind of sucked. I cannot fathom the people who believe that if only they'd stayed truer to the books, everything would be great. Truer to the books means Sansa doesn't even appear in the season (that would be weird), we get lots more Arya doing a whole lot of nothing in Braavos, even more dull shit in Meereen, tons more dull Tyrion-on-the-river muttering about whores along with a cast of nobodies that we're supposed to care about, a viewpoint character whose entire purpose seems to be a feint or red herring and who is utterly dull, another viewpoint character who is mostly on a FedEx quest and again seems totally uninteresting, a few desultory scenes with Jamie in Riverlands, and Jon getting stabbed for more justifiable reasons. Sounds great, am I right?

The reason people are justifiably disappointed is that they expected the showrunners to chuck the terrible Books 4 and 5 even more and make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. They tried to make a few of the threads better (thank god for getting Tyrion to Dany quickly), but honestly, Danerys should have been out of Meereen by episode 7 and on her way to Westeros with a Dothraki horde by the last episode; Arya should have been through with her Faceless Men schtick and onward to whatever comes next; Sansa should have continued her evolution towards Apprentice Littlefinger rather than be Helpless Princess in Another Castle just so we get some sense of movement in her arc; Dorne should have served some purpose or have been dropped altogether.

The biggest ball dropped I think is Sansa and Littlefinger. Littlefinger doesn't look anything like a master plotter now, he looks like an absolute idiot. He pushed Lady Crazy out the Moon Door with just a faint hope that Sansa wouldn't burn him, and then did what? Threw away Sansa for nothing, went riding back to King's Landing (and there's a small but potent mistake--if King's Landing is that close and that easy to reach, it kills a lot of the sense of space and distance that is important otherwise) and just dithered around there for no apparent reason. If you have a sinister manipulator in your narrative, their plans need to get more ominous and coherent as they are progressively revealed. Instead the showrunners (and Martin too, maybe) just seem at a loss about what to do with him.

[K9]

I don't entirely disagree, they didn't have a lot to work with, but the problem was that where they did strike out on their own they had about a 50-50 chance of producing utter dross. There were definitely things this season did well; getting Tyrion to Mereen and cutting out Jon Con was something I was pretty pleased with. Streamlining the utter pile of wank that was Dany in Mereen was also good. I'm glad they cut out the Iron Islands too tbh, since that just doesn't fit into the rest of the story, and they did decently with Arya I think, condensing her story well.

HOWEVER

 - What they did with Dorne was just pointless. They could have made it about the Dornish plan to crown Myrcella, which would have stayed true to the books and been better than 'Jaime and Bronn meet HypnoBoobs, Myrcella dies in the end'.

 - Stannis' campaign could have had more success, and represented a credible threat to the Boltons, rather than the long period of brooding nothing followed by a collapse in a matter of minutes of screentime.

 - Sansa and Littlefinger was positioned really well at the end of the last season and then went into strange and not-particularly great places.

 - Jon's story was condensed to the point of not making sense. They didn't do much to explain his motivations at all. It's just a series of things that happen, culminating in his death, which just happens, for reasons.

 - So many of the other characters have become caricatures. I realise that there isn't enough time to give them all depth, but in the amount of time you spent on Loras fucking rent boys you could have had Loras of the Kingsguard being dispatched to Dragonstone.

But I agree, there's a significant mismatch of expectations; yet I can't say that the showmakers did a good job this season.

[eldaec]

Issue here isn't directly to do with how faithful they were.

It is about not having good story development.

I don't hate books 4 and 5, but there wasn't much wrong with the broad plot decisions the show made either. It only really fell apart when they tried to convert that plot into a script. Littlefinger's plan was stupid as presented, but I'm fairly sure a decent plot that gets Sansa to winterfell would have been possible. Similarly, Jamie travelling to Dorne to extract Myrcella is fine, the specific choices for his method of travel and his actions while there were dumb.

That said, I don't think it is a coincidence that KL, Braavos,  and the wall (bar the last scene) were the best bits at the same time as being broadly consistent with the books. Based on the evidence of this season, this specific team just aren't very good at developing story without a template being provided.

[Khaldun]

I think they're in a genuinely tough spot, though. They are now dependent upon a story that hasn't been told yet, created by a writer who has palpably lost his grip on his own creation, judging from the last two books. Much as I would have advised them to just grasp the nettle firmly and take the story away from him altogether, and tell a better version of it in a different medium, I get why that is a very, very difficult thing to do under the circumstances.

They really need to get the characters together next season, in no more than two major clusters (leaving aside Bran and Hodor and Rickon). I'm thinking there's got to be "Team North" that's Sansa, Theon, Brienne, Sam, Zombie/Warg/NotDead Jon, Littlefinger, etc., maybe in a long hopeless retreat out of the North, settling some scores as they go with the Freys and the Boltons all that. Then there's "Team South" that's Dany, Tyrion, Varys, Friendzone, Daario, the Sand Snakes, Cersei, Jaime, Arya, that's about landing Dothraki and dragons in Dorne and moving to King's Landing. No more stallings, no more pointless mini-plots.

[K9]

Agreed, and this is something GRRM has acknowledged with the 'Mereenese Knot' in that he has about a quarter of the key characters heading to or around Mereen (Tyrion, Varys, Dany, Victarion, Jorah) when he really needs them to be heading to Westeros. At the same time he's trying to merge previously disparate storylines together, and only having mixed success.

I can deal with Arya's story being standalone because it's strong enough to stand on its own two legs. Unfortunately lots of other stories felt broadly disconnected from the overall narrative, breaking from the previous books and seasons where all the plots, or meta-plots at least had some degree of internal and external connection.

I guess only time will tell. 'Hardhome' was still a bloody good bit of televison.

For a joke a friend and I tried to work out all the factions/individuals posed to invade Westeros or stake a claim (based on the books):

1) Stannis and his army
2) Dany and the unsullied/second sons/(bonus Dothraki)
3) The Ironborn under Euron
4) Fake Aegon, Jon Con, and the Golden Company
5) The White Walkers
6) LIttlefinger, Sansa and the Lords of the Vale
7) The Boltons and Karstarks +etc
8) The remaining Northern Clans (Mormonts, Umbers, Glovers)
9) The Nights Watch
10) Arya + Nymeria and the wolf army
11) The Lannisters and Tyrells and the crown under Tommen
12) Dorne
13) Whoever the Iron Bank feels like sponsoring next
14) The Faith Militant
15) Howland Reed and the Crannogmen
16) The Brotherhood without Banners
17) The Wildlings
18) Rickon Caesar and his army from Skagos

Although some of these factions have some degree of conguence (Merging Dorne with Dany, or Dorne with Fake Aegon wouldn't be the hardest stretch; likewise Sansa/LF and the Northern Lords under Manderly would be an easy join) a lot of these factions need to either join forces with another, or otherwise die or be submit in order for the plot to be manageable.

[Khaldun]

The odd thing is that it's hard to see why any of them *want* Westeros. It's about to be frozen for years, civil war means that most of its people are going to starve anyway, nobody has any respect left for the current feudal order so exerting power over both vassals and ordinary folk will require overwhelming (and thus expensive) military force, there are ice zombies coming, there's a terrifying popular religious movement taking hold in the capital city. Whereas Braavos seems like a perfectly decent place to be, Essos is warm and has many big, basically cosmopolitan cities, etc.   Dorne looks like a pretty good place to be now too.

[K9]

I honestly can't remember since it's all garbled by lack of reading the books recently, and the changes made by the show, but I'm fairly certain that there's a point where a couple of characters discuss this and the upshot is that Westeros is literally the richest part of the world and represents its greatest economic prize. While the Iron Bank and the Free Cities all have their own levels of wealth, they still pale in comparison to the power and riches that come from ruling the whole of Westeros. I may be wrong about this; but the impression I ahd is that ruling somewhere like Braavos or Meereen is really playing second fiddle to being the king or queen of an entire continent.

And I guess the motivation is somewhat inherent to the whole 'Game of Thrones' motif. The only reason people play the game is because they want the throne, so there has to be a value implied there.

Also not all these actors want Westeros, they just want to return to parts of it (The Starks, mostly), or they want revenge (Arya, BWB), or their own special fiefdom within the kingdom (The Faith, The Boltons, The Night's Watch, The Wildlings)

[Speedy Cerviche]

It's touched upon in the books, you get a sense of how fertile and prosperous vast areas of the Reach & Riverlands are, think like Loire Valley or Flanders. Not really sure where wealth is being produced in Essos, we just hear about the teeming free cities which give the impression of being wealthy but maybe that is exaggerated? All the country seems to be unpopulated or haunted wasteland.

[HaemishM]

Of the storylines that cut out from the books, the three I wished they'd kept were Jamie going through the Riverlands (as opposed to Dorne), Mance Rayder's death being faked and Lady Stoneheart. The other stories were either OK or not, mostly based on whether or not I can figure out where the stories are supposed to be going. The Dorne story in book and show felt so useless because we have no fucking idea where it's supposed to be going or what purpose it's serving. Same goes for Arya and the Many-Faced God - we all think maybe she's training to be a face-changing assassin, but she clearly isn't willing to give up being Arya Stark so what's the point? No fucking idea and neither book or show gives us any idea. That she's a likable character is the only reason that story doesn't suck. The same goes for Sansa - the show went a lot farther with her than the books, but we've no idea what she's supposed to be doing, so the story feels somewhat like padding to keep an actress under contract.

There are so many threads from book and show that haven't had any resolution or any indication that they are going to pan out to be something important, and the show compressing those stories doesn't help them because they haven't provided any resolution either.